My contention is that all this-the ennobled externals of religion, the practical results from the living conception of the Church, the Creed retouched and coloured in every faded linehave sprung from "the gathering of the eagles round the Body," from the truer preaching of Christ crucified, and the more frequent feeding upon Him in His Holy Sacrament. Exclusiveness-In any unworthy sense it passes away from the very sense of the writing of the Church. They who are exclusive with Christ's exclusiveness, and they only, can be inclusive with Christ's inclusiveness. Formality!-Think of the three-fold perpetual witness-the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood. The water and the blood warn the Church not to spiritualise away the outward; the Spirit saves the Church from materialising the spiritual. The outward and the inward are harmonious, and the Master gives us both. "The gathering of the eagles." Sometimes in the spiritual, as the natural world, the eagle that has wheeled by the cliffs that echo his stormy scream, lies "a heap of fluttering feathers," with the hunter's shot or arrow in his heart. But we will pray for better things. From week to week round the Body in the communion, from day to day in thought and prayer, may the eagles gather-the wings of God under their wings, the great attraction drawing them onward, upward, heavenward, sunward, until earth shall lie as a speck beneath their feet, and their eyes become sunlike in purity as they gaze upon Him who is our Sun.

"And David went up, and all Israel, to Baalah, that is, to Kirjath-jearim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up thence the ark of God."-1 Chronicles xiii. 6.

WHEN the civil war, which followed upon the death of Saul, had been happily concluded, and when David was established upon his promised throne as king over the reunited tribes of Judah and of Israel, he was not slow to show himself sensible of the favours he had received from God; he bethought him of a service due and meet for the position to which God had called him. After the capture of the ark, and its subsequent restoration by the Philistines in the early days of Samuel, it had been allowed to remain in the house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim. It could not be restored to Shiloh, its previous resting-place, for Shiloh had been destroyed in that fatal overthrow which the sins of the priesthood had brought upon the land. Neither was it received, as before, within the tabernacle; for the tabernacle had been removed first to Nob, and afterwards to Gibeon, where it continued till the temple was built by Solomon; but separated from the tabernacle, it abode alone in that private dwelling-house for nearly fifty, or, as some have reckoned, seventy years—a melancholy token of the alienation from God, and from the spirit of true religion which had taken place in the hearts of the chosen people during the reign of Saul. But now there is a prospect of a better time. There may still be mistakes; there may still be failure of duty and of obedience, through ignorance or forgetfulness, after so long and fatal a relapse, and so God may still be provoked to vindicate justly His offended majesty; but there

shall not be that open neglect of His appointed worship and of His presence among His people which had latterly prevailed. As we read in the preceding verses of this chapter, "David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds, and with every leader. And David said unto all the congregation of Israel, If it seem good unto you, let us send abroad unto our brethren everywhere, that are left in all the land of Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in their cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves unto us: and let us bring again the ark of our God to us: for we enquired not at it (or rather, we enquired not after it, we allowed it to pass out of our remembrance) in the days of Saul." It is spoken with a forbearance which it will be well to imitate when we propose to repair the neglect of a former generation. Though no man ever received from another greater provocation than David had received from Saul, yet, tempering his zeal with that charity which is the bond of perfectness, he spares the memory of his departed predecessor, and speaks as though he and his people had been alone to blame, "We enquired not after it in the days of Saul." And all the congregation said that they would do so; for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people. "So David gathered all Israel together from Shihor of Egypt even unto the entering of Hemath, to bring the ark of God from Kirjath-jearim." This is one of many occurrences in the sacred narrative, which from the simplicity and conciseness with which they are recorded, will be read, for the most part, without attracting the notice they deserve, until we are at the pains to examine the particulars with some minuteness. From the parallel relation in the Second Book of Samuel, we learn that the representatives of the people in this great gathering amounted to no less than thirty thousand. It further appears that they flocked together for the occasion from great distances, extending from Egypt on the south so far northwards as to the Valley of the Orontes in Upper Syria. And for what did they assemble? Simply to form one great procession to attend upon the ark in its way to Zion, a space from Kirjathjearim of ten miles. "And David went up, and all Israel, to Baalah, that is to Kirjath-jearim which belonged to Judah, to bring up thence the ark of God the Lord, that dwelleth between the cherubims." The ark, we know, was the symbol of the divine presence. Upon it, as upon a throne, sat the majesty and the glory of the Lord of Hosts. From it, His power proceeded, as had been seen in the dividing of the waters of Jordan, in the falling of the walls of Jericho, in the prostration and demolition of the idol Dagon upon the threshold of his own temple; and therefore it was that David desired to carry it, as a tower of strength, up into the new capital of his now peaceful and established kingdom. "And they carried the ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab; and Uzzah and Ahio (the

sons of Abinadab) drave the cart; and David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets. And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon," a point of the journey where the road is steep and rough, "Uzzah put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled," or rather (as in the margin, and 2 Sam. vi. 8) the oxen shook it. "And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him for his error, because he put his hand to the ark, and there he died by the ark of God."

Thus the august ceremonial which had given promise of a glorious issue over which all might rejoice, was converted into an occasion of gloom, of terror, and dismay. "David was afraid of God that day, saying how shall I bring the ark of God home to me? So David brought not the ark home to himself, to the city of David, but carried it aside into the house of Obed-edom, the Hittite. And the ark of God remained with the family of Obededom in his house three months, and the Lord blessed the house of Obed-edom and all that he had."

But the pious design of which we have been speaking, though interrupted for a season by this sad catastrophe, was not abandoned. In the chapter which follows next but one, we read how David set himself, not only to prepare a place (in Jerusalem) for the ark of God, and to pitch for it a tent—a duty which had been before omitted; but in proposing to resume and complete its removal, as before attempted, he made provision which would secure the solemnity from the recurrence of the divine displeasure. The awful judgment which had stunned him at the first, after a short season had done what it was designed to do-it had awakened him to a sense of forgotten duty. He had been brought to see that though the punishment had fallen upon Uzzah only, the error had extended to others also, and not least, as he would now seem penitently to confess, to himself. Uzzah, it is true, through inadvertency or forgetfulness, had transgressed the law, which forbade any but a priest to touch the ark; but had due order been taken for transporting it—not in a cart, as the terrified Philistines had conveyed it back, but upon the shoulders of the Levites, of the family of Kohath, as the law commanded (Num. iv. 15)-had this been done, the occasion would have been avoided which led him to transgress. So all Israel and the priests and the Levites were gathered together to Jerusalem a second time, and David said unto the chief of the fathers of the Levites-" Sanctify yourselves, both ye and your brethren, that ye may bring up the ark of the Lord God of Israel unto the place that I have prepared for it. For because ye did it not at the first, the Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought Him not after the due order."

Accordingly they did as David commanded. The procession

was formed again in still larger numbers, and with greater solemnity than before; and all being now performed as the law required, so that we read, "God helped the Levites that bare the ark," the pious undertaking was crowned with complete

success.

Now, my brethren, I need not inform you that in all this there is something more than history-more as prophetical, more as typical, more as exemplary. We know that these historical books of the Old Testament, because they possessed a prophetical character, were called by the Hebrew Church "the former prophets," and that they are comprised in the common designation of "the law and the prophets" in the New Testament. We may remember how St. Augustine in his great work, De Civitate Dei, remarks that the period from which Samuel began to prophesy, up to and during the seventy years' captivity at Babylon, and the restoration of the temple, is wholly a "time of prophets;" and he adds, "If that portion of Scripture which seems to be only historical, as narrating the succession of the kings and the events of their reigns, is duly considered with the help of the Holy Spirit, it will be found to be designed, if not more, certainly not less, for the purpose of foretelling the future than for relating the past" (Lib. xvii. c. 1.). Further, we know that one of the Psalms composed by David to be sung on the removing of the ark-viz., the 68th Psalm-is quoted by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians as having foretold what the procession itself foreshadowed-viz., the Ascension of Christ and the blessings which should flow therefrom upon every member of His Mystical Body (Eph. iv. 7, 8). In short, we see in all this great procession, nothing less than the Universal Church of Christ partaking with the Divine David in the glory of His Ascension into the heavenly Zion.

And knowing all this, and bearing it in mind, what is it that we, as Christians and as ministers, whether clerical or lay, of the Church of Christ, may learn from the recital which has occupied our attention?

Obviously, as among its more general lessons, we may learn that periods of reformation, after past neglect, are those in which we need more than ordinary caution, lest we mar the work which is designed to promote God's glory. We may learn that all religious reformation, which is the work of man, can scarcely fail to be blemished and disfigured more or less by human infirmities; but that the effects of those infirmities are not to be acquiesced in, but to be confessed and corrected, if ever we would hope to obtain the divine approval, or even to escape the divine chastisement. Further, we may learn not to give over and abandon our good intentions-provided they be really good -not to abandon them, I say, because we have been checked and hindered in our efforts after amendment, but still to hold on