I. CHRISTIANS IN GREAT CITIES ARE PECULIARLY TEMPTED TO OVERLOOK THE GUILT OF SIN. We all know that familiarity with anything has a wonderful effect upon our feelings; and that it is a principle in human nature, that what is in itself revolting will, by familiarity, cease to disgust. The first time the medical student enters the dissecting room he has a feeling excited very nearly allied to that of shuddering. The mangled dead are strewn around, and those who hold the dissecting knife are there, silent as the dead, as if that were no place for cheerfulness. The images which he sees haunt him after leaving the room. But in a few years this same man can shut himself up there for days, and have scarcely a feeling of revolt, or an unpleasant image remain upon his mind. The young soldier, who first joins his company, has never voluntarily inflicted a wound upon any human being. He has never seen human blood flow, and has never beheld distress created by design. The first oath of his comrade startles him. At the beat of the drum, which, for the first time, calls him to face the enemy, he turns pale. But he need be in the army but a very few years, and he can witness the falling of men around him — see the mangled remains of his fellow — hear the groans of death, and see all the cruelties of the battlefield, and even close with the enemy, bayonet to bayonet, and slay his foes man by man, and yet, at the close of the day, take his meal, and lie down to sleep with as much indifference as if he had been engaged in reaping the harvest of wheat. This is almost literally getting hardened to misery and woe, and is a clear illustration of the principle. Now, in great cities it is nearly impossible not to have the mind in almost constant contact with sin and crime. There the Sabbath is trampled upon, fearlessly, constantly, and shamelessly, by the high and the low. And do you need proof that this familiarity with Sabbath breaking destroys something of the sacredness of that day? In great cities, too, the temptation to feel no responsibility to God how money is spent is very great and very distressing. Familiarity with sin, too, begins early in large cities; and if God, in His providence, should take off the veil which covers all, we should be astonished at the crimes which the children of Christian parents practise in early life, and at what practices are allowed, with hardly a trembling for the consequences.

II. CHRISTIANS IN LARGE CITIES ARE PECULIARLY TEMPTED TO ENGAGE IN WORLDLY AMUSEMENTS. By worldly amusements I mean such as are the greatest delight of people who profess to live only for this world. If I specify cards, balls, and theatres I shall be sufficiently definite to be understood. Now, when the doors are wide open — when the world around — the great mass of mankind — say there is no harm in those exciting amusements, though they know that they are most thronged by those who live farthest from God; when they are so fashionable that you can hardly mingle with genteel society, unless you fall in with them; when they are precisely adapted to our natural and strong desire for excitement, is there anything strange that the Christian should feel it hard that his Bible warns, "touch not, taste not, handle not"? Is it wonderful that some think it is a little sin — a sin, to be sure, but so small that God will not notice it — that many feel that they may pluck the fruit this once; that many think they are not known to do it, and think it is all buried from the eye of their fellow Christians?

III. CHRISTIANS IN GREAT CITIES ARE PECULIARLY TEMPTED TO NEGLECT THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. It requires much more labour to roll a stone up a steep hill than up a hill whose angle of ascent is less; and if the stone be a very smooth one, and the ground very slippery, the labour is still more increased. Who that has lived in the great city only a few years need be reminded that all good impressions fade away almost as soon as made? Perhaps the very habits of business, so essential to your prosperity in the city, have an unhappy influence upon the religion of the heart. You rise at a stated time in the morning; open your store at a given moment; know to a moment when the mail arrives and closes; must meet your accounts at a given moment; and thus you are in the habit of being punctual and exact. When the moment arrives for you to do this or that, you do it, and then throw it off the mind. And is there not a temptation to treat the duties of the closet in the same way? And thus we may have the name of religion and the form of religion, while the heart is a stranger to its power; and when we place religion on the cold level with business, we may be sure that it will have too slight hold of us either to subdue the soul or console it. It is to my purpose here to remark, how very seldom personal, experimental religion is made the subject of conversation between Christians. The fact will not be questioned. How can it be accounted for? Is it because there are so many other topics floating, that we are never at a loss to hear or tell some new thing? But why is not religious experience one of the first topics of conversation? Or, if not among the first, why is it wholly banished? Do we need it less here than elsewhere? Or is it because we are very prone to neglect the heart, and find it more agreeable to tread upon the surface, than to go as deep as the heart? Then as to reading, how much stronger is the temptation to lay the hand on the fresh morning paper, and spend some time over that, than over the Book of God! To keep along with the tide of human events, and yet not have eternal things weigh upon us! The temptation to neglect the heart, too, from the fact that our time is so completely absorbed, is very great. This makes superficial Christians — Christians who cannot stand against temptation; and who, when temptations come, inquire not what God will now have them do, and how He would have them meet them, but how they can shift off responsibility, and make everything turn to their own advantage.

IV. CHRISTIANS IN GREAT CITIES ARE PECULIARLY TEMPTED TO BE UNCHARITABLE TOWARDS ONE ANOTHER. Character, strained, and in full action, is ever before you, and you see all its defects. The joints of the harness are constantly opening, and any man can throw in an arrow, though he draw the bow at venture. Character is the easiest thing in the world to talk about. We know, and we must know each other most fully, situated as we are in large cities; but this, instead of making us uncharitable, censorious, and severe towards each other, ought to lead us to remember that every man lives in a glass house, and that therefore we ought to be very watchful and very careful.

V. CHRISTIANS IN GREAT CITIES ARE PECULIARLY TEMPTED TO BE JEALOUS OF ONE ANOTHER. No Christian is sanctified but in part; and very few are so sanctified that they can bear to be overlooked or unnoticed. Hence, when they see that one of their number is, by any means, attracting attention — is considerably noticed, and they are left behind, the feeling of jealousy is very likely to be awakened. Does such a one give more liberally than others — does he pray or speak more acceptably in public — does he, on any account, receive more notice than others — does he exercise any acquired influence — the feeling of jealousy is awakened, and, almost unconsciously to himself, the complaining Christian takes the sharpest of all weapons by which to remove the envied one, and that weapon is the tongue.

(John Todd, D. D.)

II. CHRISTIANS IN GREAT CITIES SHOULD FEEL THAT THEY ARE PECULIARLY BOUND TO ACT FROM PRINCIPLE, AND NOT FROM IMPULSE, FASHION, OR POPULARITY. That man only has a correct standard of action and of life who makes the revealed will of God his standard. In all places and circumstances, all other standards will vary, and especially is this the case in the large city. Here new things are constantly coming up, and what is in vogue and popular today may be the very reverse tomorrow. What comes in on the flood tide today may be left on the sand when the tide comes to ebb, and nobody will think it worth picking up. It is painfully amusing to notice how things, men, and measures, which are popular beyond description today, and of which it seems as if we could never tire, will, in a few days, have passed away and be forgotten. The reason is, that which decides a thing to be good or bad, desirable or otherwise, is public opinion; and that is as variable as the wind. Men, and communities of men, are governed, moved, and guided by it, and even the Christian is in great danger of allowing himself to be guided by it too. To do this or that, because public sentiment says so, and make this a rule of action, will save much reflection, much thought, and much prayer for direction. But this is not that standard which God has revealed, and which never varies. How much easier, too, to act from impulse, and to go forward in a certain course as long as the impulse sets us that way, and then to go backward if a counteracting impulse sets us the other way, than to do right, and go right at all times, without waiting for impulses, and without being driven out of our proper orbit by them!

1. Be familiar with the Bible. The book of God is so full of biography — it places men in such a variety of situations, and all under the strong light of inspiration, that it is almost, if not literally, impossible to find a situation in which a man can be placed where all his relations to God and to man are to be drawn out, for which a parallel may not be found in the Word of God.

2. Habituate yourself to read sound and thorough works in practical theology, and by this means strengthen the mind and heart, and the purposes of the soul, in what is correct and right.

3. Make every decision of moral conduct the subject of individual and fervent prayer. A conscience intuitively knowing what is right and what is wrong is what God gives only in answer to prayer.

III. IT IS PECULIARLY THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS IN LARGE CITIES TO SET THEIR FACES AGAINST EXTRAVAGANCE. But do not such and such families, who profess to be Christian, do so and so? Yes; but do they show that the Gospel of Christ, and the glory of God, is the ruling passion of their lives? If not, are they safe models for us? But my neighbour does thus and thus. Very likely; and your neighbour may be better able than you are, or he may be doing what he ought not to do, and what he cannot do long. But, say you, can you draw the limits, and go into the particulars, and say whether this and that is wrong? No; nor have I any wish to do it. But am I not safe in saying, that so long as Christians are so extravagant that they are not known from the world — so long as, in consequence of extravagance, they fail in business as often as the world, in proportion to their numbers, there must be something wrong in their slavery to fashion?

IV. CHRISTIANS IN GREAT CITIES ARE PECULIARLY BOUND TO BECOME ATTACHED TO THE CAUSE OF CHRIST. The soul, without any doubt, was formed for strong attachments. We love those who are bound to us by the ties of relationship; and the last ties which the hand of death shall sever are those which bind us to the beings whom we love. But this is not all. In most situations we become attached to inanimate objects. The man who spent his childhood in the country loves his native hills — he loves the fields which lie in sight of his father's door. Every tree and shrub is connected with some pleasant recollection of childhood. Now, in a great city there are no such attachments. You live in a street, or in a particular house, for years, and you leave it without regret and without sorrow. You go into another without reluctance, and without emotion. The unceasing hurry and perpetual pressure for time prevent our forming those deep attachments which we do in country life. Our attachments, so to speak, are to things in general — to the general excitement which surrounds us. The waves roll too rapidly to allow us to love anyone very strongly. And the danger is, that these same feelings and associations be applied to the cause of Christ; that the habits of mind and of situation lead us to place the cause of God just where we do everything else; and that we feel an attachment to that no stronger than we do to other things. Now we reach the point at which I am aiming, and I say that though you are so situated in Providence that you form no very strong attachment to your dwelling, to your street, to your business, to the family pew in the church, to the changing mass of human beings around you, yet it ought to be a matter of deep interest, of study, and of great effort, to have one set of attachments that are strong, permanent, and which make a part of your very existence — and these should be your attachments to the cause of Jesus Christ. You will ask how you can thus become attached to the cause of Christ, and exercise towards that a set of feelings so entirely different from what you do towards other things? My reply is, Be in the habit of doing something for the cause of Christ every day, and you will soon find that you love that cause above all other things. What makes you love the flower that stands in your parlour, meekly curling its graceful form towards the window, to drink in the beams of light? Not because it is helpless or beautiful. The china vase may be all that; but because you every day do something for it. You give it water — you remove it, when it requires more heat or more air — you watch its budding — you study its nature and its wants. What makes the stranger, who takes the helpless infant to her home, so soon attached to it? Because she is every hour doing something for it; and God has made it impossible for us not to love anything which we aid — an unanswerable argument for the benevolence of Him who formed the human heart! Let the Christian be in the daily habit of making sacrifices, in order to be punctual in his closet — to be daily growing in a knowledge of his Bible — to be prompt and faithful in attending the meetings for prayer, keeping his heart warm and solemn — to give of his property to build up the cause of Christ cheerfully; let him aim to do something that shall be a self-denial, every day, in order to aid the cause of Christ, and he will love that cause; and, while mingling in the tide of men that is passing away, and where everything is changing, he will have his heart and hopes bound to the throne of God, and his soul will have an anchor that is sure and steadfast. Perhaps the very fact that his attachments to other things are loose may render these the stronger.

V. IT IS PECULIARLY THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS, IN GREAT CITIES, TO FEEL A HIGH RESPONSIBILITY. By the talents which Christ puts into the hands of His servants we understand all the opportunities which we have of doing good to ourselves, or to others; and if, at the great day, our responsibilities are to be commensurate with our opportunities, in those respects, they will be great indeed.

(John Todd, D. D.)

1. If you become really a religious man, your weary spirit will be periodically bathed, cooled, and refreshed, by turning off your thoughts, and having them come in contact with the Bible, with the Sabbath, and with God's Spirit.

2. The community will have confidence in a conscientious, holy man, and will do much to aid, to sustain, and to encourage him.

3. The blessing of God will more surely attend him; and His blessing can make rich.

II. THE OBJECT FOR WHICH THE WORLDLY MAN COMES TO A GREAT CITY, AND FOR WHICH HE STAYS THERE, IS TO ACQUIRE PROPERTY — AND THIS TENDS TO LEAD HIM TO SHUT GOD AWAY FROM HIS THOUGHTS. Suppose a man were to go into some distant part of the world, for the express purpose of making money; and if he found that spot very unfavourable to meditation, to prayer, to finding eternal life, what would he say? Would he not be apt to say, I cannot here attend to religion — it is a poor place for that; but I will give my whole time and attention and soul and mind to the business which brought me here, and as soon as possible I will return to my home, where I shall have time and opportunity and everything favourable to my finding eternal life. I will therefore give it no thought at present. And is not the man of the world, in the great city, tempted to do this very thing? Is he not in danger of feeling that the great, the absorbing object for which he is here is to acquire property; and till this end is gained he has no time, no heart, to give to his soul? In all that he does he wishes to keep that plan uppermost — to be sure that every sun that shines, and every breeze that blows, has something to do in promoting that great plan — that one plan.

III. THE SYMPATHIES OF ALL AROUND HIM TEND TO CARRY HIS FEELINGS IN THE CHANNELS OF EARTH — AND THESE ENDANGER THE SOUL OF THE WORLDLY MAN IN THE GREAT CITY. You speak with perhaps fifty men during the day, and five hundred during the week, and among them all you hear not a word about the interests of the soul. And you will say, we must not only he men of business, but we must talk and think about business, about commerce and politics, the light and the grave news of the day, to show that we are men of business. All this may be true, and I mention it because it is true, and because the great impression which this great crowd of immortal beings makes upon each other is adverse to their finding eternal life. Oh! if you lived in a world where everything, from the fresh daily paper that you find in the morning on your table, to the late partings at evening, tended to remind you of God, and to call forth your sympathies towards Him, it would be very different. But the living mass around you, so alive, and so awake to everything relating to this world — so eager for something new — so delighted with anything that can excite — so anxious to live in the swollen tide of human sympathies, seek to turn all this tide in a channel that leads from God.

IV. DANGERS ATTEND THE MAN OF THE WORLD, IN HIS BUSINESS, BEFORE AND AFTER THE QUESTION OF HIS SUCCESS IS SETTLED. Is it not so, that a man in the full tide of business — while straining every nerve to reach the point of certain success and entire safety, so chases the world all the week — so courts it, in all possible ways, that when the Sabbath arrives he is so exhausted that he has no energy of body, no energy of soul, no elasticity of spirit, to meet the duties of that holy day? Is it not so, that he can hardly rise on the Sabbath morning in season to find the house of God; and when he does go there, does he not too often come much like an exhausted machine, and has no power to gird up his mind to sober thought, to deep reflection, to manly discussion, or to close and thorough reasoning? But suppose he has passed the point alluded to, and is sure to succeed in business, and to become an independent man. The dangers to his soul may now be increased tenfold. There may now be some relaxation to that keen, intense, anxious pursuit of business; hut his very relaxations become dangerous, inasmuch as they tend to animalism. How often do we see a man, as soon as it is decided that he will be successful in business, commence a course of stimulating his system, till it becomes overburdened, and is destroyed by its own fulness. What creates that riot in the blood, which cuts off such men at a stroke, and with a suddenness that would be painfully surprising were it not so common? All this animalism, which leads the man to yield to good eating and good drinking continually, is certain to drive God from the heart, while it destroys the powers of the body; and experience will testify that, as a general thing, such men are the very last that are brought into the kingdom of God. Then there is that loftiness and pride of feeling which is almost inseparable from success in business, and which makes us look down upon those beneath us with feelings allied to scorn, and upon ourselves as great and wise, or we could not have succeeded. How few who are successful in business are willing to ascribe it all to God's good providence which favoured them!

V. THE MAN OF THE WORLD, IN THE GREAT CITY, IS IN FEARFUL DANGER OF HAVING HIS SOUL RUINED BY THE MONEY SPIRIT OF THIS AGE. Wherever you turn you will see proofs of the universal presence of this spirit. You have heard it in the murmurs of the street — you have seen it written on the golden splendours of those who have not fallen — you have seen it upon the tarnished glories of the fallen and falling — in the blasted hopes of thousands — and you will read it on the anxious brow of your acquaintance. You have heard the proof of it sighed from the massy prison; it is read in the glance of the fugitive from justice; — it is summed up in startling numbers at the bottom of the daily expense book. Now, what have been the inevitable consequences of this race in the fashions of earth? One very plain one is, that everybody must be in debt! It is the order of the age that all must make as much show as possible; and money is desired only for this end. Of course, every man will calculate to live up, fully up, to his income. Then others, and many, too, will go beyond their income — beyond what they can earn. The next result is, that those who are honest cannot get all their honest income, because all by which a dishonest man exceeds his income must come out of the honest: And as very few calculate to live under their supposed income, and as many will live over theirs, the consequence must be that everybody runs in debt. This must be the result to all who do not live as much within their income as will make up for what others exceed theirs. Now, the very spirit of the age tempts the man of business to graduate his expenses, not by what he has in his hand, but by what he ought to have. A man in business this year makes sales, the profits of which are some five thousand dollars. He sells to some fifty different people, and at the end of the year he is to receive the profits. Now, what is the temptation? Is it not to consider the five thousand dollars as already his own, to graduate his expenses accordingly, and to forget that he has virtually been insuring on the honesty and success of the fifty men to whom he has made sales? And when at length he finds that he is disappointed — that instead of obtaining profits, he has lost fully to that amount — what does he do, or rather what is he tempted to do? To contract and curtail expenses? Or is he now tempted to become reckless, and to plunge headlong into almost any speculation which promises relief? Hence we have an evil arising from the spirit of the age worse than any and all yet mentioned; and that is, men are tempted to use dishonest means and reckless measures to obtain money to keep up in the race which all around them are running.

VI. THE MAN OF THE WORLD, IN THE GREAT CITY, IS TEMPTED TO UNDERVALUE TRUTH. The buyer pretends that he is quite indifferent whether he purchases or not; and the seller is quite indifferent whether he sells or not; and so these two indifferent men will contrive to meet every few hours, and throw out baits to each other, and yet both professing not to desire the trade! The purchaser decries the goods — he has seen better, has had cheaper offered him — can do better elsewhere; and yet, when he cannot cheapen them any further, to oblige the seller, he takes them! "It is naught, it is naught," saith the buyer, "and straightway goeth away and boasteth." It is not for us to say how much news is manufactured for particular purposes — how many letters are conveniently forgotten to be delivered, till too late to take advantage of the news — how many letters are received which were never written; but it is for us to say that the man of business, in the great city, is awfully tempted to exaggerate good qualities, to point them out where they do not exist, to conceal defects, and to gloss over imperfections, without recollecting that the eye of God is upon him. If he says it is difficult to get along without doing so, I reply, that this very difficulty constitutes his danger — that it will be more difficult to bear the indignation of God forever; that "lying lips are an abomination to the Lord"; and that no apology will be accepted by Him.

(John Todd, D. D.)

     5367   kingdoms

Ezra 1:1-2

     5704   inheritance, material
     7942   ministry

Ezra 1:1-3

     1035   God, faithfulness
     1355   providence
     7217   exile, in Babylon
     7241   Jerusalem, significance

Ezra 1:1-4

     1305   God, activity of
     4215   Babylon
     5366   king
     7240   Jerusalem, history
     7468   temple, rebuilding

Ezra 1:1-5

     7135   Israel, people of God

Ezra 1:1-11

     4333   gold

Youthful Confessors
'But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. 9. Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. 10. And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who hath appointed your meat and your drink; for why should he see your faces worse liking than the children which …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Extracts No. vi.
[Here twelve pages or more of the objector's manuscript are omitted, as the nature of his arguments will pretty fully appear in the reply; and as he has been obliged to rescind the ground he had taken, it is not expedient to publish his remarks. That the reader may see a little of the manner, however, in which he has given up his part of the argument, the following is inserted.] "Speaking however on the evidences of revelation, you have stated some things worthy of serious consideration; which if …
Hosea Ballou—A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation

Of Antichrist, and his Ruin: and of the Slaying the Witnesses.
BY JOHN BUNYAN PREFATORY REMARKS BY THE EDITOR This important treatise was prepared for the press, and left by the author, at his decease, to the care of his surviving friend for publication. It first appeared in a collection of his works in folio, 1692; and although a subject of universal interest; most admirably elucidated; no edition has been published in a separate form. Antichrist has agitated the Christian world from the earliest ages; and his craft has been to mislead the thoughtless, by …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

The Greater Prophets.
1. We have already seen (Chap. 15, Nos. 11 and 12) that from Moses to Samuel the appearances of prophets were infrequent; that with Samuel and the prophetical school established by him there began a new era, in which the prophets were recognized as a distinct order of men in the Theocracy; and that the age of written prophecy did not begin till about the reign of Uzziah, some three centuries after Samuel. The Jewish division of the latter prophets--prophets in the more restricted sense of the …
E. P. Barrows—Companion to the Bible

The Historical Books.
1. In the Pentateuch we have the establishment of the Theocracy, with the preparatory and accompanying history pertaining to it. The province of the historical books is to unfold its practiced working, and to show how, under the divine superintendence and guidance, it accomplished the end for which it was given. They contain, therefore, primarily, a history of God's dealings with the covenant people under the economy which he had imposed upon them. They look at the course of human events on the …
E. P. Barrows—Companion to the Bible

A Sermon on Isaiah xxvi. By John Knox.
[In the Prospectus of our Publication it was stated, that one discourse, at least, would be given in each number. A strict adherence to this arrangement, however, it is found, would exclude from our pages some of the most talented discourses of our early Divines; and it is therefore deemed expedient to depart from it as occasion may require. The following Sermon will occupy two numbers, and we hope, that from its intrinsic value, its historical interest, and the illustrious name of its author, it …
John Knox—The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3.

The Iranian Conquest
Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving in Coste and Flandin. The vignette, drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a statuette in terra-cotta, found in Southern Russia, represents a young Scythian. The Iranian religions--Cyrus in Lydia and at Babylon: Cambyses in Egypt --Darius and the organisation of the empire. The Median empire is the least known of all those which held sway for a time over the destinies of a portion of Western Asia. The reason of this is not to be ascribed to the shortness of its duration: …
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 9

The Justice of God
The next attribute is God's justice. All God's attributes are identical, and are the same with his essence. Though he has several attributes whereby he is made known to us, yet he has but one essence. A cedar tree may have several branches, yet it is but one cedar. So there are several attributes of God whereby we conceive of him, but only one entire essence. Well, then, concerning God's justice. Deut 32:4. Just and right is he.' Job 37:23. Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

God's Sovereignty and the Human Will
"It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Phil. 2: 13). Concerning the nature and the power of fallen man's will, the greatest confusion prevails today, and the most erroneous views are held, even by many of God's children. The popular idea now prevailing, and which is taught from the great majority of pulpits, is that man has a "free will," and that salvation comes to the sinner through his will co-operating with the Holy Spirit. To deny the "free will" of man, …
Arthur W. Pink—The Sovereignty of God

Ezra-Nehemiah
Some of the most complicated problems in Hebrew history as well as in the literary criticism of the Old Testament gather about the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Apart from these books, all that we know of the origin and early history of Judaism is inferential. They are our only historical sources for that period; and if in them we have, as we seem to have, authentic memoirs, fragmentary though they be, written by the two men who, more than any other, gave permanent shape and direction to Judaism, then …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament