"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it."-GENESIS, XXviii. 12.

OUR ministry is a ministry of love; satire, invective, and irony do not become the pulpit. If, however, these weapons could ever be legitimately used, it would be against a class of men who, if the Bible were left to them, would long since have made it the most ridiculous of all books; I allude to those preachers who pique themselves on their skill in the science of spiritualizing everything.

With them, Samson and his three hundred foxes are designed to illustrate some of the profoundest mysteries of the faith. If Jeremiah is drawn up out of a pit with "old cast clouts and rotten rags under the cords," they find here a symbol of the sinner, who is a prisoner of hope, and is drawn by the cords of grace, which hide the filthy rags of his self-righteousness. If Jesus mentions “mint, anise and cummin," these people at once open their eyes at words so full of meaning; they examine different writers to know how and where these plants. grow, and what are their qualities; and are surprised

that everybody does not see in the bitterness of two of these herbs and the sweetness of the other, striking emblems of the justice, holiness, and mercy of God. If the disciples say, "Lord, behold here are two swords," they detect symbols of which the uninitiated could never dream; one sword is the law, which is "quick and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword;" the other is the gospel, as to the effects of which Jesus declares, that he has come "not to send peace, but a sword." Peter smites Malchus, cutting off his right ear, and in this act we see nothing but the rash zeal peculiar to that Apostle. But these evangelists smile at our simplicity; for Malchus was a Jew, and this destruction of his ear was a plain portent of the judgment about to fall upon that nation, by which, as Isaiah foretold, their "ears should be stopped that they might not hear the word." And Christ's healing the ear, shows that spiritual hearing shall one day be restored to Israel. As for Solomon's temple, there is no end to the secrets, the marvels, the mysteries, the deep enigmas it contains; nor is there a window, or chapiter, or candlestick, or knop, or flower, or lintel, or post, or saw, or hammer, or nail, or cup, or dish, or spoon, or pair of snuffers, in which these interpreters do not discover more gospel than they can find in the great commission itself.

We cannot too sternly reprobate this impertinent and impious foolery; but we must have a care lest we go to the opposite extreme. The chimeras of these visionaries are, after all, less deplorable than the cold freezing metaphysics of those theologians who see no spirit

ual signification in the emblems and types of the Bible, and who can scarcely conceal an affected fastidiousness which is shocked at the use made by the Apostles; and the Saviour himself, of the figures found in the Old Testament.

These remarks have been naturally suggested by the text. This vision of Jacob has, no doubt, given rise to vagaries and extravagancies; but, for all that, it has plainly a very important mystical import. That the ladder was an emblem of Christ, we know certainly; we have this truth from his own lips. I sometimes think how small a Bible Adam had; and Jesus was the Alpha and Omega of that little Bible. Page after page was soon added to that first revelation of the promised "Seed. of the woman;" but still Christ was all and in all. Moses, the Psalms, the Prophets, all testified of him, until we come down to Malachi, when the whole East is laced and glowing with the approach of the Sun of Righteousness.

With reference to Jacob's ladder, we have not only intimations, but the Saviour's own direct interpretation. In the first chapter of John's Gospel, he says, "Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." Elsewhere he declares, "I am the way. No man cometh unto the Father but by me." Here, in language most explicit, he applies the image of Jacob's ladder to himself.

We cannot be mistaken, therefore, as to our understanding of this vision. It is delightful to think how

familiar God used to be with patriarch and prophet; and in divers manners he was accustomed, in times past, to speak unto the fathers. During the patriarchal dispensation he sometimes taught men by dreams. "Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and my ear received a little thereof in thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon man." In this appearance at Bethel Jehovah intended to teach Jacob lessons of great value. And the question for us is, what are these lessons ?

I. Now, in explaining this vision, observe, my brethren, what is very instructive, that the type is a ladder. Some stilted expositors have, indeed, been offended by the homeliness of the image; for such an august occasion they would prefer a crystal column, a flight of jasper steps, or a pyramid of diamond. But this is poor and pitiful. It is the same spirit which is displeased with the revelation of God to Moses in a burning bush, regarding the cedar of Lebanon as a more dignified and appropriate dwelling-place for the Eternal. Men of this stamp would have the Apostles never appear except on the stage, moving majestically in buskins. Not content with being pedants themselves, they would make pedants and coxcombs of Patriarchs and Prophets and Apostles; and would have God never speak to his children but in hexameters and pompous grandiloquence.

The appearance is a ladder; and, now, the dullest of comprehension must at once feel that one mournful truth is here taught. We are plainly reminded by this emblem that the natural normal communication between

God and man has been destroyed; and that, by the fall, this planet has been placed in a state of isolation and non-intercourse with heaven.

Had there never existed a delightful communion between earth and heaven, or if such communion, once established, had never been interrupted, why, then, the type would lose much of its significancy; in that case the figure would want much of the singular accuracy found in the mystical representations of the sacred Vol

ume.

But knowing, as we do, the melancholy history of our race; remembering that in God's government, sin is not only a crime but a crisis, changing altogether the condition of the culprit, severing him from all affinity with Jehovah except that of wrath and destruction -how expressive, how exact the image. A ladder, why is a ladder required? It is because the natural, proper passage way is broken up. There is a cry of fire; you hasten to the spot, and see a ladder placed against a window and the inmates escaping by its aid. You comprehend at a glance the true state of things; you know that the flames have reached the stairway, and that all access and retreat by that avenue are cut off. And then, too, when is a ladder employed? It is in a pressing emergency, as in the case of the burning house above supposed; the ladder with the family descending upon it tells its own story; the fire has made great headway, and there is a necessity for precipitate flight.

You feel, then, the first truth taught us by this vision; you see the curse in which humanity is involved by sin. Nor let us only read the calamity in this