Historians chronicle the events which take place among the nations, and especially those which bring about the transference of supremacy, hegemony, from one people to another. The great empires of antiquity succeeded one another in a movement both picturesque and instructive. Ezekiel, in this passage, describes the defeat and humiliation of Egypt, and the victory and exaltation of Babylon. But he does more than this; as a religious teacher and prophet he affords us an insight into the moral, the religious, principles which underlie all political changes.

I. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CHANCE IN HISTORY. Men often suppose themselves to account for events when they attribute them to fortune, to caprice, to chance. But chance is no cause, it is the name for our ignorance of causes - a useful name if its signification is not transformed, and if in its use men do not impose upon themselves.

II. THE OPERATION OF DIVINELY INSTITUTED LAWS EFFECTS CHANGES IN THE PROSPERITY AND POWER OF NATIONS. Some of these laws are physical, some intellectual, others moral. They are of the greatest interest to the historian, who traces their action and interaction, their cooperation and conflict, as these are manifested in the rapid or gradual, the unobserved or conspicuous, changes which take place in the relations of great communities, and in the succession of one people to another in the development of the great drama of humanity.

III. YET TO THE THOUGHTFUL MIND LAW IN ITSELF IS INSUFFICIENT TO ACCOUNT FOR HISTORY. The mind craves, not indeed for something competing with law, but for something behind law, expressing itself by means of law. Law in its phenomenal manifestations is mere uniformity. Now, just as our actions may be accounted for on their phenomenal side by physical laws, whilst yet we know that purpose, intention, thought, do really and in the highest sense govern our actions, and that we are therefore moral and responsible beings; so in human history religion teaches us to look through facts and laws to Mind beyond them all, controlling, inspiring, and governing them all, in a word, accounting for them all. That is to say, we are taught by the prophet to see God in history. And reflection shows us how reasonable and justifiable is this view.

IV. A GENERAL DIVINE PURPOSE RUNS THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY. It is God who raises one nation and humiliates another. These changes may for the most part be justified by the well-informed and thoughtful student. It is admitted that there are cases which occasion us the greatest perplexity. But the obscure must be interpreted by the plain. We should never forget that we are ignorant, short-sighted, and very fallible beings, and should avoid dogmatizing upon individual cases. But the reflecting and pious man will make a point of recognizing the Divine hand in the affairs of nations, and in the continuity of human history. This lesson has been taught most effectively by modern philosophers of history, from Herder to Hegel, and from Hegel to Bunsen.

V. OUR ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PRINCIPLE DOES NOT INVOLVE THE APPROVAL OF HUMAN PASSIONS WHICH IMPEL TO MANY HISTORICAL CHANGES, OR THE DELIGHT IN HUMAN SUFFERINGS WHICH FOLLOW UPON THEM. As a matter of fact, God in his wisdom makes use of many agencies and instrumentalities of a character which cannot be approved. The ambitions, jealousies, envies, etc., which animate nations and rulers are overruled by the Lord of all to secure ends which appear good and desirable to him. "He maketh the wrath of man to praise him." It is not for a moment to be supposed that the King of heaven takes any delight in the bereavements and desolations which befall the innocent as a consequence of those wars which are incident to the achievement of great, historically important ends. We can only reconcile much that happens with our highest view of the Divine character by remembering that God has a higher end before him than human enjoyment, and that in the execution of his purposes he is not limited by the horizon of time.

VI. ALL THE EVENTS WHICH TRANSPIRE AMONG THE NATIONS SHALL ULTIMATELY BE SEEN TO SUBSERVE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ENDS, ESPECIALLY THE GLORY OF DIVINE RIGHTEOUSNESS. This is the faith of the godly, and is encouraged by revelation. Faith shall be justified. "The day shall declare it." - T.

(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.)