The mark set on Cain still remains; and, as the book of life has travelled and is travelling from land to land, he is exhibited to the shrinking eyes of mankind, as fearfully and publicly as when he wandered upon the face of the earth. And well will the reader of that book do to remember, that whenever the serenity of his countenance is marred by an unwarrantable fit of anger, by the rising of a rebellious spirit, by the scowl of a sulky and discontented mind, by a frenzy of jealousy, by a gnawing of envy, by a rankling of malice and uncharitableness, he bears a piece of the mark of Cain upon him. Men turn in aversion from him, and God is not nigh him. Blessed is he, who, daily coming forth meek and humbled from his secret confessional of self-examination, into the bustle of worldly converse, can certify to his heart that it is clear of these foul inmates; and that, in abstaining from exhibiting the outward marks of their possession, it is not the strength of the law, but the love of Christ which constraineth him.

KORAH.

B. C. 1471.

In the short space of two years, which elapsed between Israel's crossing the Red Sea and his arriving, for the first time, at the borders of the promised land, he had rebelled against God no less than ten times. Believers are apt to read this account with considerable self-gratulation, and with a complacent wonder at such stiff-necked conduct, under circumstances which would have overwhelmed themselves with tears of most thankful obedience; and unbelievers mock at the notion of such a people being the chosen of God, of their leader having any credentials from God, of their law being delivered from God. But the triumph of both parties would be not a little disturbed, could the secret springs of the various fortunes of their own nation be laid open to the broad day, as those of the events which happened in Israel have been. It may admit of reasonable doubt, whether any two years of trying times (and trying, indeed, was this period to Israel), throughout the whole history of a Christian nation, could be found less culpable, had they been as openly subjected to the visitations of God's judgment, and publicly tested by as searching a proof. We should remember that God, and not man, took account of Israel's trespasses. But let us suppose

even so lax an accountant as one of ourselves to examine, by the light of God's truth and the guidance of his grace, two such years as they roll by us, and to note down each ungodly clamour of discontent as it is raised by any numerous or influential part of the community. It may be feared that their number would reach ten quite as soon as the number of years reached two. Leaving, therefore, the careless to his vain-glory, and the infidel to his mockery, and learning to regard the conduct of Israel, and God's open dealing with him, as the type of what is passing secretly in the case of every nation, let us turn with a wholesome fear to the record of one of these eruptions of discontent.

Israel, in sour and humiliating disappointment, was retracing his steps from the very verge of the promised land back again to the wearisome desert. The moody child in a fit of whim and perverseness had dashed away the cup of bliss, just as it was put to his lips. When he was bidden to go and take possession he refused; and then, when he was forbidden, he made the attempt. A shameful defeat, and the prospect of a pilgrimage of forty years in the wilderness-a term which very few were likely to overlive-made him angry with himself for his folly. But self is never long an object of blame : at the very time the man is earnestly looking without and about for some one on whom he may fix it. Nations ever find this substitute in their rulers. They lead them, therefore they seem the cause of whatever they suffer; and their high station makes them the natural butt of that jealousy with which equals, and that envy with which inferiors, persecute

fame or power.

Moses and Aaron, therefore, al

though they had done all to correct their perverseness, were now accused by the people as the authors of their calamities and a sedition arose, of a deeper dye of baseness than any other, both from the rank of the master-movers in it, and from the iniquitous motives which suggested it.

The ring-leader was Korah; and, as is common in such cases, he was the last man, both from proper feeling and true interest, to have engaged in it. He was cousin-german to Moses and Aaron, and should therefore naturally have given them all his help. But it was this very relationship which made him ambitious to supplant them. He was also of the tribe of Levi, of that sacred body which God had chosen for his ministry; he ought, therefore, to have been a pattern of obedience to the powers which God had ordained. But this was but another reason for his aspiring to the place of Aaron. The popular discontent gave him hopes of gaining his iniquitous end. His plan seems to have been to displace Aaron, whom he would represent as arbitrarily chosen by Moses, and not as ordained of God, and to throw his office open to common suffrage; and then he himself, as the popular idol, had every chance of obtaining this place,-at all events of having his turn. With the usual blindness of passion, and reckless infatuation of ambition, he chose not to see that the measures which he was employing to depose Aaron from his office, might be employed against himself to depose him from such rank as he was already holding. Aaron was enjoying the same privilege in his tribe, that his tribe was among the

people and the same authority which could abrogate the privilege of Aaron, could also abrogate that of the tribe of Levi. They both rested on the appointment of Moses, under the direction of God. But if God had not so directed, why should the tribe of Levi retain its usurped dignity any more than Aaron his? But infidelity is ever short-sighted, even in matters of this world.

Thus this Levite, this minister of God, who bore on his shoulders the ark of God's presence, was the first to deny his divine appointment. Disgusting as infidelity is in every one, in a minister of the Church it is monstrous. He is perjured to the most awful engagement a man can make, and is shamelessly enjoying the temporal advantages of a profession which he does not really hold. To the extreme of folly he joins the extreme of baseness. With the usual artifice of aspirants, he vented calumnies against those whom he wished to pull down, asserting that Moses was ambitious to set himself up as sovereign over them. This alone would prove how unworthy Korah was of the station where he already stood. There cannot be a greater proof of unprofitableness in our own station than the wanton casting of censure upon others. It is an unequivocal sign that we have not only not discharged, but not even made ourselves acquainted with, the duties of our own station: for in adequately performing these, there is that attention, that watchfulness, that continual sense of dependence on God, of unworthiness before him, of thankfulness unto him, that there is neither time nor cause for a feeling of discontent to enter into the heart; and in making ourselves acquainted