THE PEOPLE'S BIBLE: DISCOURSES UPON HOLY SCRIPture. BY JOSEPH PARKER, D.D., Minister of the City Temple, Holborn Viaduct, London; ་་ AUTHOR OF ECCE DEUS," "THE ARK OF GOD," "Apostolic life," "TYNE CHYLDE," PEOPLE'S FAMILY PRAYER BOOK," ETC., ETC. " THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH M (Continued) Chapter xxvii. 8. "He stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind." THE USE OF THE ROUGH WIND. ANY comforting discourses have been preached from this text. Men eagerly seize consolation, whether it flows from the text, or is imported into it. Why this eager grasping after comfort? Simply because all men need it. Look upon the largest congregation that can assemble, and any wise preacher who has had experience of his work will know that in the crowd that throngs around him are people with broken hearts, or are sensible of disappointment, anxiety, fear, or are apprehensive of coming distress. Hence I have never hesitated to advise the young preacher to remember that the most of his hearers are not geniuses or critics, but needy, pain-struck, and weary souls. He who preaches to that class will always be abreast of the times, will always keep step for step with any progress which civilisation can ever make. Venerable and pastoral preachers have comforted their flocks with this gracious text. They have used it in the sense that God would not send both the east wind and the rough wind at one and the same time-in the sense that God holdeth back the rough wind as a skilled rider might hold back some proud and urgent steed; they have not been slow to quote the words "He tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb," and so full of gracious poetry are these words that many have not hesitated to believe they were in the Bible. All beautiful words are in the Bible, if not literally yet spiritually, suggestively, in all the helpfulness of solace and stimulus. All Indian poetry is |