sentence of our speculative reason, it is impossible. And yet, in Christ, we have it! We are consciously in it, as we are in Him, and all we can say is, that it is the righteousness of God, by faith, unto all and upon all them that believe.

But I must draw my subject to a close. It is a common impression with persons who hear, but do not accept the calls of Christ and His salvation, that they are required to be somewhat less in order to be Christian. They must be diminished in quantity, taken down, shortened, made feeble and little, and then, by the time they have let go their manhood, they will possibly come into the way of salvation. They hear it declared that, in becoming little children, humble, meek, poor in spirit; in ceasing from our will and reason; and in giving up ourselves, our eagerness, revenge, and passion-thus, and thus only, can we be accepted; but, instead of taking all these as so many figures antagonistic to our pride, our ambition, and the determined self-pleasing of our sin, they take them absolutely, as requiring a real surrender and loss of our proper manhood itself. Exactly contrary to this, the gospel requires them to be more than they are- greater, higher, nobler, stronger-all which they were made to be in the power of their endless life. These expressions, just referred to, have no other aim than simply to cut off weaknesses, break down infirmities, tear away boundaries, and let the soul out into liberty, and power, and greatness. What is weaker than pride, self-will, revenge, the puffing of conceit and rationality, the constringing littleness of all selfish passion? And in just these things it is that human souls are so fatally shrunk in all their conceptions of themselves; so that Christ encounters, in all men, this first and most insurmountable difficulty-to make them apprised of their real value to themselves. For no sooner do they wake to the sense of their great immortality than they are even oppressed by it. Everything else shrinks to nothingness, and they go to Him for life. And then, when they receive Him, it is even a bursting forth into magnitude. A new inspiration is upon them, all their powers are exalted, a wondrous, inconceivable energy is felt, and, having come into the sense of God, which is the element of all real greatness, they discover, as it were in amazement, what it is to be in the true capacity.

A similar mistake is connected with their impressions of faith. They are jealous of faith, as being only weakness. They blame the gospel, because it requires faith, as a condition of salvation. And yet, as I have here abundantly shewn, it requires faith just because it is a salvation large enough to meet the measures of the soul, as a power of endless life. And oh, if you could once get away, my friends, from that sense of mediocrity and nothingness to which you are shut up, under the stupor of your self-seeking and your sin, how easy would it be for you to believe! Nay, if but some faintest suspicion could steal into you of what your soul is, and the tremendous evils working in it, nothing but the mystery of Christ's death and passion would be sufficient for you. Now you are nothing to yourselves, and therefore Christ is too great, the mystery of His cross an offence. O thou Spirit of grace, visit these darkened minds, to whom Thy gospel is hid, and let the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ, shine into them! Raise in them the piercing question, that tears the world away and displays the grimace of its follies, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

I should do you a wrong to close this subject without conducting your minds forward to those anticipations of the future which it so naturally suggests. You have all observed the remarkable interest which beings of other worlds are shewn, here and there in the Scripture, to feel in the transactions of this. These, like us, are powers of endless life, intelligences that have had a history parallel to our own. Some of them, doubtless, have existed myriads of ages, and consequently now are far on in the course of their development,-far enough on to have discerned what existence is, and the amount of power and dignity there is in it. Hence their interest in us, who as yet are only candidates in their view for a greatness yet to be revealed. And the interest they shew seems extravagant to us, just as the gospel itself is, and for the same reasons. They break into the sky, when Christ is born, chanting their "All-hail!" They visit the world on heavenly errands, and perform their unseen ministries to the heirs of salvation. They watch for our repentances, and there is joy among them before God when but one is gathered to their company in the faith of salvation. And the reason is, that they have learned so much about the proportions

and measures of things which as yet are hidden from us. These angels that excel in strength-these ancient princes and hierarchs that have grown up in God's eternity and unfolded their mighty powers in whole ages of good, recognise in us compeers that are finally to be advanced as they are.

And here is the point where our true future dawns upon us. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." We lie here in our nest, unfledged and weak, guessing dimly at our future, and scarce believing what even now appears. But the power is in us, and that power is to be finally revealed. And what a revelation will that be! Is it possible, you will ask in amazement, that you, a creature that was sunk in such dulness and sold to such trivialities in your bondage to the world, were all this time related to God and the ancient orders of His kingdom in a being so majestic !

How great a terror to some of you may that discovery be! I cannot say exactly how it will be with the bad minds now given up finally to their disorders. Powers of endless life they still must be; but how far shrunk by that stringent selfishness, how far burned away as magnitudes by that fierce combustion of passion, I do not know. But if they diminish in volume, and shrink to a more intensified power of littleness and fiendishness, eaten out, as regards all highest volume, by the malice of evil and the undying worm of its regrets, it will not be so with the righteous. They will develop greater force of mind, greater volume of feeling, greater majesty of will and character even for ever. In the grand mystery of Christ and His eternal priesthood-Christ who ever liveth to make intercession-they will be set in personal and experimental connexion with all the great problems of grace and counsels of love comprised in the plan by which they have been trained and the glories to which they are exalted. Attaining thus to greater force and stature of spirit than we are able now to conceive, they have exactly that supplied to their discovery which will carry them still further on with the greatest expedition. Their subjects and conferences will be those of principalities and powers, and the conceptions of their great society will be correspondent, for they are now coming to the stature necessary to a fit contemplation of such themes. The Lamb of Redemption and the throne of law, and a government comprising both, will be the field of their study,

and they will find their own once petty experience related to all that is vastest and most transcendent in the works and appointments of God's empire. Oh, what thoughts will spring up in such minds, surrounded by such fellow intelligences, entered on such themes, and present to such discoveries! How grand their action! How majestic their communion! Their praise how august! Their joys how full and clear! Shall we ever figure, my friends, in scenes like these? Oh, this power of endless life! Great King of Life and Priest of Eternity! reveal Thyself to us, and us to ourselves, and quicken us to this unknown future before us!

XVI.

RESPECTABLE SIN.

JOHN viii. 9—“ And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last; and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst."

Ir is with sins as with men or families, some have pedigree and some have not; for there are kinds and modes of sin that have, in all ages, been held in respect, and embalmed with all the honours of history; and there are others that never were and never can be raised above the level even of disgust. The noble sins will, of course, be judged in a very different manner from the humble, base-born sins. The sins of fame, honour, place, power, bravery, genius, always in good repute, will not seldom be admired and applauded. But the low-blooded sins of felony, and vice, and base depravity, are associated with brutality, and are universally held in contempt. Whether the real demerit of the two classes of sin is measured by such distinctions is more questionable. Such distinctions certainly had little weight with Christ. He was even more severe upon the sins of learning, wealth, station, and religious sanctimony, than upon the more plebeian, or more despised class of sins. Indeed, He seems to look directly through all the fair conventionalities, and to bring His judgment down upon some point more interior and deeper. He appears, in general, to be thoroughly disgusted with all the mere respectabilities, whether men or sins. The hypocrisies of religion, the impostures of learning, the gilded shows of wealth gotten by extortion, the proud airs of authority and power employed in acts of oppression, provoke His indignation, and He deals with them in such terms of emphasis as indicate the profoundest possible abhorrence.

Hence the jealousy with which He was watched by the elders, and priests, and rulers; for every few days some rabbi, scribe,