I

Following in the same train, we notice, again, what value there may be in discoveries of christian experience, and the legitimate use they may have in christian society. Some of the best and holiest impulses ever given to the cause of God in men's hearts are given by testimonies of christian experience. Like all other things, they are capable of abuse. They may run to a really pitiful conceit, being not only misconceived by the subjects them selves, but even made a gospel of and thrust forward, on occasions where they are out of place and against all holy proprieties. Still there will be times, more or less private, when the humblest and weakest disciples can speak of what God has done for them, with the very best effect. Nor is there any thing so unpractical and destitute of christian respect as the shyness of some fastidious people in this matter. It never exists in a truly manly character, or in connection with a full-toned, living godliness. That will be no such dainty affair. It will speak out. It will declare what God has done, and show the method by which he works. The new joy felt will be a new song in the mouth, and every new deliverance will be fitly, gratefully confessed. There will be no shallow affectation of delicacy shutting the lips and sealing them in a forced dumbness, as if the righteousness of God had been taken by a deed of larceny. How often will two disciples help and strengthen each other by showing, each the other, in what way God has led him, what his struggles have been, and where his victories. And, if there should be three or four included, or possibly, and in fit cases, more, a whole church, what is there to blame? They spake often, one to another, says the prophet, and God hearkened and heard it. God list ens for nothing so tenderly as when his children help each

other by their testimonies to his goodness and the way in which he has brought them deliverance. Besides there is a higher view of these personal testimonies and confessions. All these experiences, or life-histories of the faithful, will be among the grandest studies and most glorious revelations of the future,-a spiritual epic of wars, and defeats, and falls, and victories, and wor.drous turns of deliverance, and unseen ministries of God and angels, that, when they are opened to the saints, will furnish the sublimest of all their discoveries of Christ and of God. Exactly as an apostle intimates in those most hopeful, inspiring words of hi-When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe. May he not be glorified in them here, and, in some feebler measure, admired for the testimonies yielded by their experience, as their warfare goes on.

And now, last of all, let this one thing be impressed: for every thing I have been saying leads to this, that the true wisdom, in all these matters of holy experience, is to act naturally. If you seem to yourself to have really passed from death unto life, and to have come into God's peace, interpose no affectations of modesty, no restrictions of mock prudence, but in true natural modesty and a sound natural discretion, testify the grace you have received. Take upon you promptly every duty, enter the church, obey the command of Christ, in the confession of his name and the public remembrance of his death. O, if we could get rid of so many affectations in religion, and so many unnatural, artificial wisdoms, how many more real Christians would there be, and these how much better and heartier. How many are there in our

christian communities that are living afar off and appa rently quite inaccessible, who, if, at a certain time in their life, they had gone forward and taken the places to which they were called, would now be among the shining mem bers of the great body of saints. And how many in tho church cripple themselves and all but extinguish their life, by allowing nothing good or right in them to be naturally acted out. They stifle every beginning of grace by their over-persistent handling, scrutinizing, and testing of it. They read Edwards on the Affections, it may be, till their affections are all worn out and killed by so much jealousy of them, when, if only they could give them breath in the open life of duty and sacrifice, they would flame up in the soul as heavenly fires, indubitable and irrepressible.

If any of you, either out of the church or in, have lost ground in these artificial and restrictive ways, come back at once to your losing point and consent to be natural, to act out whatever grace God will give you, and, when you are conscious of his love to you, or his new creating presence and peace in your heart, be as ready to trust your consciousness as you are the consciousness that you think, or doubt, or do any thing else. In a word, do not hide the righteousness of God in your heart, lest you make a tomb of your heart and bury it there. Go forward and act out naturally, testify freely, live openly, the grace that is in you.

Thus it was, I have already said, with the sturdy war riors of the faith in the first ages of the church. They were men who took the grace in them as a call. The love that broke into their hearts burned up all their falso modesty. Their humble position was exalted by the faith of Jesus, and they stood forth in all the singularity of the

cross, cowed by no superiors, daunted by no perils. Goď made them heroes by simply making them natural, and the time of Christly heroism will never be restored, till men can take their lives in their hands and go forth, in downright good faith, to follow their Master, acting out the spirit he has kindled in them, and testifying to mankind the riches of the grace they have found in his gospel. What we want, above all things, in this age, is heartiness and holy simplicity; men who justify the holy impulse of grace in their hearts, and do not keep it back by artifi cial clogs of prudence and false fear, or the sham pretenses of fastidiousness and artificial delicacy. These are they whom God will make his witnesses in all ages. They dare to be holy, dare just as readily to be singular. What God puts in them that they accept, and when he puts a song, they sing it. They know Christ inwardly, and therefore stand for him outwardly. They endure hardness. They fight a fight. And these are the souls, my brethren, who shall stand before God accepted. And we shall be accepted as we stand with them,―otherwise never, It will be a gathering of the true soldiers, a gathering of them that have made sacrifices, conquered perils, and lived their open testimony for God and his Son. They will come in covered with their dust and scars, and Christ will crown them, as heroes that have stood and kept their armor. And then how deep and piercing are those words of his, Will they slay us forever, or will they make us alive?-Whosoever, therefore, shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father, which is in heaven. But, whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father, which is in heaver.

I

XXI.

THE EFFICIENCY OF THE PASSIVE VIRTUES.

REVELATIONS i. 9.-"The kingdom and patience of Jesus

Christ."

KINGDOM and patience! a very singular conjunction of terms to say the least; as if, in Jesus Christ, were made compatible, authority and suffering, the impassive throne of a monarch and the meek subjection of a cross, the reigning power of a prince and the mild endurance of a lamb. What more striking paradox. And yet in this you have exactly that which is the prime distinction of Christianity. It is a kingdom erected by patience. It reigns in virtue of submission. Its victory and dominion are the fruits of a most peculiar and singular endurance. say the frui's of endurance, and by this I mean, not the reward, but the proper results or effects of endurance Christ reigns over human souls and in them, erecting there his spiritual kingdom, not by force of will exerted in any way, but through his most sublime passivity in yielding himself to the wrongs and the malice of his adversaries. And with him, in this most remarkable peculiarity, all disciples are called to be partakers; even as the apostle ir his exile at Patmos writes,-I John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus. I offer it accordingly to your con sideration, as a kind of first principle in a good life, which -it will be the object of my discourse to illustrate-