well. 'Yield yourselves to God, and your
members as instruments of righteousness to Him.' It is to be written on
possessions. Malachi necessarily keeps within the limits of the
sacrificial system, but his impetuous eloquence hits us no less. It is
still possible to 'rob God.' We do so when we keep anything as our own,
and use it at our own will, for our own purposes. Only when we recognise
His ownership of ourselves, and consequently of all that we call 'ours,'
do we give Him His due. All the slave's chattels belong to the owner to
whom he belongs. Such thorough-going surrender is the secret of thorough
possession. The true way to enjoy worldly goods is to give them to God.

The lattices of heaven are opened, not to pour down, as of old, fiery
destruction, but to make way for the gentle descent of God's blessing,
which will more than fill every vessel set to receive it. This is the
universal law, not always fulfilled in increase of outward goods, but in
the better riches of communion and of larger possession in God Himself.
He suffers no man to be His creditor, but more than returns our gifts,
as legends tell of some peasant who brought his king a poor tribute of
fruits of his fields, and went away from the presence-chamber with a
jewel in his hand.

THE UNCHANGING LORD

'I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not
consumed.' MALACHI iii. 6.

The scriptural revelations of the divine Name are always the basis of
intensely practical admonition. The Bible does not think it worth while
to proclaim the Name of God without building on the proclamation
promises or commandments. There is no 'mere theology' in Scripture; and
it does not speak of 'attributes,' nor give dry abstractions of
infinitude, eternity, omniscience, unchangeableness, but lays stress on
the personality of God, which is so apt to escape us in these abstract
conceptions, and thus teaches us to think of this personal God our
Father, as infinite, eternal, knowing all things, and never changing.
There is all the difference in our attitude towards the very same truth
if we think of the unchangeableness of God, or if we think that our
Father God is unchangeable. In our text the thought of Him as unchanging
comes into view as the foundation of the continuance of the unfaithful
sons of Jacob in their privileges and in their very lives. 'I am the
Lord,' Jehovah, the Self-existent, the Eternal whose being is not under
the limitation