who had sent the storm, he was throwing a chance away of his and their common safety (i. 6). How different, how superior is the conduct of Jonah! How magnificent is his simple confession of faith as he stands among the distracted, bewildered professors of polytheism: "I am an Hebrew; and I fear Jehovah, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land!" (i. 9). Even on their dark mind flashed, for the moment at least, the conviction that here was truth. The power of the elements had prostrated their minds with terror, and in Jonah's confession of faith in One Great Supreme Creator, they saw the only Power that could rule the elements of nature.

Take another example. It shall not be from rough seamen, but from the inhabitants of polished Athens; yea, from the very elite of its philosophers and men of letters. The assembly of the Areopagus was no better off than the ignorant, hardy crew who rowed hard to bring their vessel to land when the storm fell upon them on their voyage to Tarshish.

Athens was in many respects the most remarkable city in the ancient world. Learned, polite, witty, critical, it was the resort of learned men from every part of the earth. The intelligence of the world was concentrated there. It was the Eye of that Greece which, in the pride of its philosophy and manners, called the rest of the world barbarian. A Jewish teacher, taught in the school of Jesus Christ, comes to Athens (Acts xvii. 15-34). He looks around him on the scene which it presented. He views it in its religious aspect. He sees it "wholly given to idolatry." In the language of Isaiah, it was "full of idols.' "It was easier," an old satirist said, "to find a god than a man at Athens." But there was one altar and one inscription there which specially drew Paul's attention, as illustrative of the uncertainty and confusion of polytheism. It was an altar with this inscription, "To the unknown God."

The history of this altar and inscription is very curious. It would appear to have been this. Somewhere about 430 years before the birth of Christ a terrible pestilence, originating in Ethiopia, and passing through Egypt, fell with a fearful force upon the city of Athens. The Greek historian Thucydides has described with painful minuteness the whole process of this disease, from its first seizure of an individual to its fatal termination.* It was a disease unparalleled in its virulence and destructive power in the memory or the knowledge of that generation. The skill of the physician could not arrest its progress. It fell on the strongest as on the weakest alike, and after inflicting terrible torture, carried off its victims within a period of from seven to nine days.

Whether these were cared for or neglected, it mattered not. Whether they were attended by the physician or not, the issue was the same. The servants fled from the infected houses. In the city, at that time in a very crowded state, the dead lay on the dying and the dying on the dead, throughout the streets. They fell one over another as they walked along in the thoroughfares, and lay expiring round the public fountains, where they had crept to assuage their terrible thirst.

It was probably under these circumstances that the Athenians erected

* Thucydides. Peloponesian War. Book ii.

the altar "To the Unknown God" which drew the attention of the Apostle Paul as he lingered at Athens. Either while the pestilence was raging, or, as several of the early fathers and modern writers suppose, after it was removed, they raised their altar. Unable amid their multitude of deities to say which had sent it, or which had removed it; unable even to determine whether any one of the deities whom they worshipped was concerned in it or not, or whether it might not come from some one whose name they had never heard of, they raise an altar of supplication or of thanksgiving, or of both, to the " Unknown God," whom they desired to propitiate or to praise. Who he was, what was his name, what were his power and his attributes, they knew not. Only they would seek by this indefinite inscription to make sure that they thus addressed the right Divinity. And so they did; but He was a very different God from anything they supposed. It was the one true God who had sent the pestilence, and removed it. It was to Him, though they knew it not, that the altar had been raised. How noble in its simplicity is the confession of faith which Athenian superstition suggested to Paul to make: "God, that made the world and all things therein, seeing He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." Here was the God unknown to polished Athens, but known, and made known, by one who drew his first knowledge of God from the Scriptures of the Old Testament.

Let us now for a little while contrast the worship of God as we find it depicted in the Scriptures and in the annals of heathenism. When Israel left Egypt and came to Palestine, they found its inhabitants devoted to their own system of religious worship. They were earnest and sincere in it, no doubt, but that worship was indeed of a fearful nature. From various notices of it in Scripture, amply confirmed by independent testimony, we know that cruelty and obscenity were distinguishing features of it. It was of such a nature that Israel was even forbidden to inquire and pry into its nature. All imitation of it was sternly forbid by the Jewish lawgiver: "Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which He hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods " (Deut. xii. 31).

Such was the nature of the worship among the peoples in whose country Israel took up their habitation. We know, however, that the general worship of other nations was of a similar kind. The most fearful crimes were connected with ancient idolatry. It could not be otherwise since the deities themselves set the example. Adultery, incest, unnatural crime, cruelty, bloodshed, and theft, were exemplified in the persons of their gods, and were consecrated as part of the worship to be paid to them. Venus patronised courtesans; her temples were scenes of impurity; her worship, under one name or another, was spread over the earth. Human sacrifices bled on the altar of some of the most polished nations of antiquity, as well as among rude and uncivilised peoples. It was so in Egypt, Canaan, Assyria, Phoenicia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, India, Mexico, Gaul, and Britain.

How different the worship required from Israel! The grand reason

always given for their utter separation from the Canaanites was, lest they should be led to imitate their obscene and cruel worship (Deut. xii. 30). The cruelty which was so common among others was forbid to them. No human sacrifices were to stain the altar of Jehovah. No cutting or maiming of their persons was permitted to His priests, such as was judged agreeable to the cruel gods of heathenism (Deut. xiv. 1; 1 Kings xviii. 28). Purity was required in Jehovah's worship and from His priests.

We have a remarkable instance of this last feature of Jewish worship in 1 Samuel ii. The conduct of the sons of the high priest Eli is here brought plainly before us (ver. 22). It was most heinous and most disgraceful. But all its heinousness and disgrace arose from the contrast it presented to the conduct expected and required from those sacred characters who ministered to Jehovah in His tabernacle. The conduct of Eli's sons, if committed by the priests of heathenism, would have been little thought of. On some occasions it might have formed part of their worship. In Israel it was a heinous sin. It was felt to be such by the people. It was sternly denounced by God, who, for their sin, cut off Eli's sons from his household and the priesthood from his house (vers. 32-35).

Now we ask ourselves, whence has all this arisen? What was there in the children of Israel to account for their superiority in this respect over other people? Moses, their lawgiver, was no doubt learned in all the wisdom, religious as well as secular, of Egypt. But it most certainly was not from this source he drew his religious system, which was in every respect opposed to that of Egypt. The nation to whom he gave the law had lived for four hundred years in Egypt, and were deeply tainted with its idolatries. During the whole period of their history, from their deliverance from Egypt to their return from Babylon, they were far more strongly addicted to the idolatries of the nations around them than to the pure Theism which was taught in their Scriptures. Indeed, that whole history is chiefly the fierce struggle between Theism and Idolatry, in which only after long centuries of contention, the former came out triumphant. No schools of philosophy ever arose among them to give them the advantage of a superior culture. Only throughout their lengthened history, from the Exode to the return from Babylon, there rose up a line of men, the most extraordinary line of men in the religious history of mankind-the Prophets-who made their bold protest against idolatry and its abominations; who kept up the continuity of Theism and its pure attendant worship; who, occasionally favoured and honoured by the ruling civil power, but far more frequently persecuted by it, at length prevailed, and fixed Theism and purity of worship as the standard faith of Israel. What was the source of the inspiration of the Jewish prophets? It came not from man but from God.

HENRY CONSTABLE.

THE FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Of this Society will be held (D.V.) in the Temperance Hall, Chapel Street, Leeds Road, Bradford, Yorkshire.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, September 6, 7, 8, 1881.

Order of Public Gatherings

On TUESDAY, September 6th, at 7.30p

p.m.

The Annual Sermon will be delivered by the Rev. WILLIAM LEASK, D.D., of Maberly Congregational Church, London (Editor of "The Rainbow "), on "The Old Faith."

On WEDNESDAY, September 7th, at 7.30 p.m.

A Public Meeting will be held, chair to be taken by ROBERT J. HAMMOND, Esq., of London (Treasurer of the Association), when addresses will be delivered as follows:-Mr. WILLIAM LAING, of Edinburgh, on "Conditional Immortality." Rev. GEORGE P. MACKAY, of Mint Lane Baptist Church, Lincoln, on "Unconditional Immortality.' General H GOODWYN, of Reading (Author of "Antitypical Parallels ") on "A Challenge to Orthodoxy." Mr. GEORGE ALDRIDGE, of Bradford, on "The Silence of Scripture on Natural Immortality." On THURSDAY, September 8th, at 3 and 7.30 p.m.

Two Public Meetings will be held, chair to be taken at each meeting by HENRY J. WARD, Esq., of Liverpool (President of the Association). At the afternoon meeting at 3, a Lecture will be delivered by Mr. ALBERT SMITH, of Blackburn (late curate of the parish church, Withnell, Lancashire), on "What is the soul? Is it Mortal or Immortal?" to be followed by a Paper, which will be read by General H. GOODWYN, on "The Gospel in Ezekiel." At the Evening Meeting, at 7.30, addresses will be delivered as follows: Rev. THOMAS VASEY, of the Baptist Mission, Bacup, on "The Church of Christ: Its Present Mission and Future Destiny." Rev. BURLINGTON B. WALE, of High Wycombe (Author of the "Closing Days of Christendom "), on "The Pre-Millennial Advent: Its Nature, Necessity, and Nearness." Rev. WILLIAM LEASK, D.D., on "Witnessing." ROBERT J. HAMMOND, Esq., on "Lessons of the Conference."

N. B.-Voluntary offerings in aid of the expenses of the Conference will be received at the doors. A Book-stall will be provided for the sale of Literature. Catalogues free. An earnest invitation is hereby given to the Public to attend the above meetings.

The order of Private Gatherings—

On Tuesday, September 6th, at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the Annual Meeting of the General Committee, the President in the chair. After the evening sermon a social gathering of members and friends. Refreshments will be provided free by the local committee.

On Wednesday, September 7th, at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., the Anuual Meeting of Members, the President in the chair. The first hour of the Morning Session will be spent in prayer, to be conducted by the Rev. W. Leask, D.D.

On Thursday, September 8th, leaving at 9.30 a.m., and returning at 1 n.m. (in time for dinner), an Excursion to Saltaire, the model town founded by Sir Titus Salt. Rail Fare (Return tickets): First-class, 10d.; Third-class, 6d.

REFRESHMENTS.-Dinner will be provided each day at 1.30 at the Imperial Temperance Hotel, Manchester Road, at a charge of 1s. 9d. per head per day. Tea will be provided each day at 5.30 at the Temperance Hall, at a charge of 9d. per head per day. LODGINGS.-Unless otherwise directed, a home will be provided by the Local Committee for all speakers and members of General Committee. Intending visitors are requested to communicate with the Local Secretary, Mr. Walter Clark, 6, Exeter Street (Bradford, Yorkshire), who will secure lodgings for them. If any homes are available (after providing for the above wants) they will be devoted to members.

MISCELLANEOUS.-Letters and Telegrams can be addressed to "The Conference, Temperance Hall, Bradford." The Hall is in Chapel Street, Leeds Road, just opposite the Eastbrook Wesleyan Chapel, and but a short walk from the railway stations. The Private Meetings will be held in the Saloon. Hymns: Special hymn-sheets will be provided.

CONFERENCE DONATIONS: With the pressing claims made upon the General Fund, the Committee urges its friends and helpers to specially subscribe sufficient to cover the whole expense of this year's Conference. Donations will be thankfully received and acknowledged by Robert J. Hammond, Treasurer, 62, Maida Vale, London, W.; and Cyrus E. Brooks, Secretary, Malvern Link, Wen.