For every material thing there is a test. We may know metals by their action under chemical agents, or by the furnace-flame. We can test gases by their power to sustain life or to sustain flame. We can test dynamical forces by electricity or by their power to create motion. So for human character there is a crucial test.

I. ADULTERATED METAL. The seed of Israel had sadly degenerated. They had been, compared with other people, as silver and gold. Now they were, in God's esteem, only as dross, and "his judgment is according to truth." What virgin gold is in a human kingdom, true righteousness is in the kingdom of God. Loyalty and love are the coins current in God's empire. A good man is worth more than argosies of gold and rubies. Wisdom, righteousness, and love, - these are the only durable riches. They exalt and enrich men for time and for eternity. Selfishness, disobedience, and rebellion are the dross and rust which eat out the very life of the soul. Real riches become part and parcel of the man.

II. THE FURNACE-FIRE. What the material flame of the furnace is to metals, God's anger is to human character. It tests the qualities of mind and heart. As metals have no power to resist being cast into the furnace, neither has any man power to exempt himself from Divine chastisement. It comes upon all in some form or other. In some, humility, submission, resignation, appear. These are precious metals - the gold and silver of moral excellence. In others, fretfulness, remorse, defiance, are the effect. These are base dross, destitute of any worth. A myriad of men know nothing about their characters until trial, in some sort, comes upon them. If milder forms of chastisement will not melt the hardened metal, the anger of Jehovah will wax hot. There shall be, sooner or later, self-revelation - the sooner the better.

III. SEPARATION. The furnace is not merely a test of metal and alloy; it further separates the one from the other. Among men this separation, resulting from God's visitations, is twofold.

1. This separation is seen as one between man and man. The precious and the vile become more distinguishable one from the other.

2. The separation is internal. In those who turn the affliction to good account there follows self-inspection, self-denial, pruning. The idol is dethroned. The vice is abandoned. The evil is withstood and fought. Refinement goes on within. The darkness and the light separate. The man comes out of the process as gold that is purified.

IV. DESTRUCTION. The residuum of alloy is cast out as base and worthless. God will not tolerate falsehood, hypocrisy, or any iniquity in his kingdom. "Every liar shall have his portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." The liar is not only the man who speaks with intention to deceive; he is the man who has preferred to deceive himself rather than face the truth. Unquestionably, separation, accomplished in the furnace, is with a view to refinement, but also with a view of destruction to the worthless dross. Every man has his face either toward purity or toward perdition. The processes of God's furnace are going on among us every day. Are we getting better or worse? - D.

Man, as a moral being, cannot have happiness or misery independently of his inner life. Each man in some sense farms his own nature, and reaps the harvest planted by his own hands. Man is a wealthy proprietor. No lordly acres, no wide domain of forest land can ever equal the enclosure of his own heart.

I. IN A HUMAN SENSE WE TAKE OUR INHERITANCE IN OURSELVES. Most certainly we are inheritors of our past human delinquencies, or of the joy of duties fulfilled. All other inheritances drop off from us; like gathered flowers they fade! These are rooted in our hearts. Men may blame us and be wrong, or praise us and be wrong! But our conscience is a true rest, and happy the man whose smile is as bright, whose voice as cheery, and whose step is as elastic, whether the world crowns him with garlands or stones him with scorn!

II. IN A MENTAL SENSE WE TAKE OUR INHERITANCE IN OURSELVES. Mind is a most productive soil. Tend it well, and do not hurry the crops, and there is nothing so wonderful in the universe of God. When you enter the British Museum, remember that from year to year every little and every large volume has to be received and registered there. What a registry it is, but it is nothing to the registry of the human brain! How easily it works, how quickly it shelves for future use the rarest thoughts, how wonderfully at call it brings the fact or the illustration, not by some stately messenger, but by the swift telegraphy of its own sensations.

III. IN A MORAL SENSE WE TAKE OUR INHERITANCE IN OURSELVES.

1. How true it is of national life. Rome took her inheritance when, ceasing the virtues of simplicity, honour, and home life, she chose luxury, pleasure, and the pomp of war. Greece took her inheritance when, choosing philosophic disquisitions and sophistical debates, she darkened the moral sense by mere casuistry. Jerusalem took her inheritance when, forsaking the sublime simplicity and tender spirituality of her faith, she became rabbinical in her theology, inhuman in her neglect of the needy, and proud in the speciality of her privileges. In each ease the inheritance came: the military strength of the northern armies crushed the power of Rome; the enfeeblement of Epicureanism and refined libertinism seized upon the heart of Greece; and the pride, prejudice, and pernicious formalism of the Pharisees slew the soul of Hebrew piety.

2. We, too — each of us — take the inheritance in ourselves; the harvests of life are either tares or wheat, according to our past sowing. Nor does the Gospel of Jesus Christ interfere with this law. When we become Christians our past sins are forgiven us through the precious blood of Christ., but their influence on our after character and life growth is not hereby destroyed. Old habits, old pursuits, old readings, old companionships are not dead and forgotten in a day. They, too, still will be helping or hindering our progress in the Divine life, and elevating or depressing the spirituality of our minds.

IV. IN ALL THESE ASPECTS OF LIFE WE MARK THE DIVINE FITNESS OF THINGS. If men tell us that we have no business to occupy our thoughts with moral fitnesses, that God's yea is yea, and God's nay is nay, whatever we may judge, we answer that God is more considerate than such critics, for He has condescended to appeal to us, that we may judge between Him and His vineyard; He has permitted the record of those early cries — "This be far from Thee, Lord, to destroy the righteous with the wicked." "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" And he has sanctioned St. Paul's appeal not to every man's blind obedience, but to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Thus we can rest our arguments upon the unimpeachable bases of Scripture and conscience.

V. IN THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST WE SEE THIS GREAT FACT RECOGNISED. The Divine Lord saw, as we never can, the hearts of men. He not only saw rich publicans and lowly Nazarenes, not only lordly Pharisees and impoverished Samaritans, but He saw the great heart burthens men were everywhere bearing.. Surely He was a Prophet, and more than a Prophet; for prophets came to warn and to condemn, to lift up the cry, "Repent! repent!" But this face was not like one of the old prophets. No! There were touches of tenderness in it such as they had not, womanly almost, yet weak. Out, out, they went to Christ. Surely the voice was strange, for great souls fill words with love as well as thought, and what would not the Divine soul do? Yes! they heard Jesus. Never man spake as He spake. And what was His theme? Ah! it is well that we know it. Come, ye inheritors of shame and woe and ill-gotten wealth, and long-repented lives of sensual sin! Come! you cannot lose your memories of life, you cannot cut off their influence on mind and heart; but the bitter, bitter inheritance of shame and agony and woe and guilt — you, even you, may lose all these! Listen to me: "I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

VI. IN THE FUTURE DAYS THE INHERITANCE WILL WORK ITSELF OUT. Yes! Thou shalt take it. As a pilgrim of eternity, you take the life burthen with you. He that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; and he that soweth to the spirit, shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. This is in exact harmony with moral law.

(W. M. Statham.)