I. MAN'S EFFORT TO SUPPLY HIS NEED. There are the springs breaking forth among the hills and inviting men freely to use them. But there are also the wells men dig for themselves. Men must have water, yet they cannot always go and live by the natural springs, and so where they have to live they dig wells, and wonderfully do they succeed oftentimes in getting what they want. Water comes apparently in exhaustless abundance. Thus it is with the natural resources which man strives to obtain for himself. They open out before him far larger than any present wants. And thus when man sees all this within his reach, he naturally devises great undertakings on the strength of such great resources.

II. THE SELFISH USE OF HIS SUCCESS. It not unfrequently happens that the man who digs a well for himself does it at the expense of others, making their wells to run dry. The thing may be done unintentionally, or almost on a commonly accepted principle of every one looking out for himself; still it is to be looked on as pure selfishness. The resources of Babylon were increased by diminishing the resources of other peoples, This is a point to be always looked at in estimating men of large resources, namely, how far those resources have been gained by leaving others without resource at all or with but a scanty one.

III. GOD'S REMOVAL OF HIS RESOURCES. "I will make her springs dry." God can dry up all humanly provided wells. We must not boast ourselves of their number, their depth, or the ease with which they keep to a certain level in spite of all drains upon them. Powerful nations, proud of their history and their achievements, need to remember this Divine interference. Men, looking hack on a long course of individual success, need to remember the same. One can imagine a city in a time of siege, thoroughly provisioned, knowing exactly how much it had for food, and not troubling itself at all about drink, seeing that it had a deep well, the waters of which showed hardly any difference even in the driest summer. Yet all at once that well may fail, and, however large the other supplies, thirst will compel surrender. God dries up all wells that have been dug in covetousness and injustice.

IV. THE IMPLICATION OF OTHER ENDURING RESOURCES. "With thee is the fountain of life," says the psalmist (Psalm 36:9). We must look, not to the wells of our own digging, but to the springs from the everlasting hills. Especially we must catch the spirit of Psalm 87. There the psalmist praises Zion, and finishes up by saying, "All my springs are in thee." Let our springs be in the holy and abiding mount of God (Hebrews 12:22). - Y.

"Set ye up a standard," plain, obvious to be seen; a standard, high, on a mountain top, so as to be a rallying-point for the people in the battle of the Lord. A message, this, to fire the hearts of men, to steep them to the full in the sense of life s solemnity. The appeal of the prophet had reference, in the first instance, to the assault of the Persian armies upon the fortress city of Babylon. Cyrus was employed (to use the language of the prophet elsewhere) as the very "battle-axe" of God; who was to .do God's work in delivering the Jews from their captivity, and rebuilding for their use His Temple at Jerusalem. It is the commission of the Lord God to His Church in every age; to lift up the ensign of the Cross, the banner of Christian conflict, the talisman of victory, the rallying-point of all true hearts in the battle of the Lord, against the power of evil that is abroad in our midst. If there is one lesson more emphatically taught than any other by the facts of our present-day experience, it is the lesson that in Christianity alone lies, after all, the true and ultimate hope of the world; that the standard of the Gospel is the only true measure of our social reforms and of our personal or political ideals.

1. There is a power in our midst to-day — a power so imperious that a man may well be excused for holding it to be well-nigh irresistible — the power of public opinion. Are we not apt to forget that this potent engine of our modern life is one whose motive force may, and should be, in a Christian country, spent always in the cause of God, and of His Christ? It is an engine which, if it be informed by hearts aglow with the Spirit of Christ, and guided by hands that are exercised in deeds of truth and love, may well work miracles before our eyes. Then, may not our Church expect of all her sons that each one of them should realise his personal responsibility in this respect?

2. What a motto is this for our national and imperial politics! What a "programme" is here set forth for any Government, under whatever accidents of political party! "Set ye up a standard in the land"; a standard of righteousness and of good faith in matters of international law, or the observance of international treaties.

3. May not this be taken, again, as a potent watchword at our parliamentary elections? Can we not, each one of us, deal at any rate with our own vote as with a serious trust? Can we not raise over our polling-booths a standard of principle rather than party? Can we not muster courage to demand fair play for all; to denounce the use of unworthy weapons in the process of electioneering — the weapons of declamation and mob-flattery, of slander and personal abuse, of mere brute. force, obstruction, and of secret bribery, boycotting, or cowardly intimidation? "Set up a standard in the land." What nobler principle for our legislation itself? A standard of mercy and unselfishness, of wise and intelligent sympathy. in dealing with the needs of the many; a standard of absolute impartiality, strict and entire justice, in legislating for the uneducated and the helpless classes of our population.

4. So, too, with respect to other matters of less distinctly political interest. There is room, surely, for a higher standard in questions of pressing social gravity, such as, for example, the subject of national education. Here, at any rate, the Church is pre-eminently bound to hold aloft the ideal of that which alone is worthy of the name of education. Or, turning again to such facts as are revealed by our criminal statistics, in view of the open sore of our national intemperance; or of the not less terrible though secret cancer of our national impurity, can we not, as carrying the Cross of our dear Lord's self-denial on our foreheads, can we not do something towards setting up a standard in our homes, in our streets, in our business, and in our amusements, — a standard of sobriety and of purity?

5. So, again, in our very amusements. It rests with you, of the English Church laity, to "set up a standard in the land." It is for you, who are the patrons of the English stage, to pronounce with no faltering accent that the drama — whether grave or gay — no more necessitates the stimulus of an immoral plot, or the adjuncts of a vicious art, than the pen of a Macaulay, a Tennyson, or a Browning, need defile itself with the innuendoes of a Wycherley or the coarseness of a Congreve.

6. And once again, in reference to those forum of sin to which as a great commercial people we arc especially prone. Have we not enough knowledge of a sound political economy to see that all the remedies which Parliament can propose will never touch the root of the evil we deplore? that what is wanted is not so much the mere readjustment of taxation, still less the forcible redistribution of our wealth, as the introduction of a higher standard into our commercial transactions; the standard of a fairer co-operation between the capitalist and the workman — of a more just and upright dealing between tradesman and customer — of a closer sympathy between master and servant, between producer and consumer: a standard of hard, but not slavish, honest, and conscientious work — a standard of fair working hours and fair working profits; a standard of just prices and honest weights and measures; a standard of thrift and temperance and industry, that will condemn idleness and dishonesty in the workman, the producer, but which will not excuse indolence and selfishness and unbridled luxury in the consumer; a standard which denounces all trade adulterations, all lying labels, all imitation brands, all false advertisements, and other similar forms of commercial ostentation and inequity; a standard, moreover, which declares such sins to be as sinful among the warehouses of the city as in the village shop, and pronounces the vices of the west to be at least as criminal as the crimes of the east. Lift up your hearts, then, comrades in the sacred battlefield of right and wrong! Look to that warrior Christ who leads us on.

(H. B. Ottley, M. A.)