cross of Jesus signifies was central, eternally in His majestic character. Nothing superlative is here displayed, nothing is done which adds so much as a trace to God's personal glories. All that is done is simply to express or produce in real evidence what His glories were from eternity. All that is discovered to us in the passion was in Him from eternity. The cross was the crown of His perfection before the worlds were made. He was such a Being as could feel toward evil and good according to what they are—such a Being, too, as could suffer an enemy, endure his wrong in royal magnanimity, and subdue him by His patience. Oh, if He were only wise, omnipotent a great architect piling immensity full of His works-fixed in His eternity--strong in His justice-firm in His decrees-that were doubtless something; even that would present Him as an object worthy of profoundest reverence, but in the passion of Jesus He is more. There His power is force; here it is sacrifice. There He creates by His fiat; here He new-creates by the revelation of sacrifice. There He astonishes the eye; here He touches and transforms the heart. Is it wrong to say that here is the summit of His greatness? Were He, then, the mere ideal that figures in our new literature; some great no-person; some vast To PAN sleeping back of the stars; some clear fluid of impersonal reason, in which both we and the stars are floating, having neither will nor feeling—a form of stolidity made infinite-would He be a greater Being, more admirable, warmer to our love, and worthier to be had in reverence? Oh, these great passibilities! this sorrowing love! this enduring patience that bears the sins of the world! He that groans in the agony, He that thirsts on the cross, this is the real and true-the Lord He is the God! the Lord He is the God! The God of mere amplitude will do to amuse the fancy of the ingenious-the God of sacrifice only can approve Himself to a sinner.

And here it is that our gospel comes to be so great a power. It is not, on one hand, the power of omnipotence, or of a naked, ictic force, falling in secretly regenerative blows, like a slung shot in the night. Neither is it, on the other hand, any mere appeal of gratitude, or newly-impressed obligation, drawing the soul to God by the consideration of what He has done, in the cross, to purchase a free remission. Bonds of gratitude, alas! have never been so great a power on human souls. And how

does it appear that any such bond has been even admitted, when as yet the remission itself is rejected, and the want of it unfelt? No; this power, this wonderful power! is God in sacrifice. It is measured, and expressed, and incorporated in the historic life of the world as a power new-creative in the passion of Jesus, the incarnate Word of God; for it is here that God pours out into the world's bosom His otherwise transcendent perfections, and opens, even to sight, the otherwise inaccessible glories of His love. It is even the official work, therefore, and mission of the Holy Spirit to be Christ in men, taking the things of Christ's passion and shewing them unto men's hearts; for Christ himself is, in His sacrifice, the mighty power of God. This is the power that has new-created and sent home, as trophies, in all the past ages, its uncounted myriads of believing, new-created, glorified souls; the power that established, propagates, perpetuates, a kingdom; the power that has tamed how much of enmity, dissolved how many times the rock of obstinacy, cleansed, purified, restored to heaven's order, comforted in heaven's peace how many guilty, otherwise despairing souls. It can do for you, O sinner of mankind! all that you want done. It can regenerate your habits, settle your disorders, glorify your baseness, and assimilate you perfectly to God. This it will do for you. Go to the cross, and meet there God in sacrifice. Behold Him, as Jesus, bearing your sin, receiving the shafts of your enmity! Embrace Him, believe in Him, take Him to your inmost heart. Do this, and you shall feel sin die within you, and a glorious quickening— Christ the power of God, Christ in you the hope of glory-shall be consciously risen upon you, as the morn of your new creation.

And you, my brethren, that have known this dawning of the Lord, what a certification have you, in this sacrifice, of God's sympathy! How intensely personal is He to you! Go to Him in your every trouble. Go to Him most confidently in all the troubles of your inward shame, and the struggles even of your defeated hope. When the loads of conscious sin are heaviest on you, and you seem even to be sinking in its mires, address Him as the God of sacrifice. Have it also as your lesson, that you yourself will be most in power when readiest in the enduring of evil; that you will bear fruit and be strong,

not by your force, not by your address, not by your words, but only when you are with Christ in sacrifice. Strange that any one who has ever once felt the power of God in Christ, should, for so much as a moment, miss or fall out of this glorious truth. It comes of that delusion of our selfishness, which is, in fact, a second nature in us,-the seeing only weakness in patience, and loss in sacrifice. But if God's own might and blessing are in it, so also are yours. Look for power, look for the fulness of joy where Christ himself reveals it. Take His cross, that same which He brought forth out of the bosom of God's eternal perfections, and go back with Him in it, to be glorified with Him in the height of His beatitude.

XVILL

DUTY NOT MEASURED BY OUR OWN ABILITY.

LUKE ix. 13-" But He said unto them, Give ye them to eat."

WHEN Christ lays it thus upon His disciples, in that solitary and desert place, to feed five thousand men, He cannot be ignorant of the utter impossibility that they should do it. And when they reply that they have only five loaves and two fishes, though the answer is plainly sufficient, He is nowise diverted from His course by it, but presses directly on in the new order that they make the people sit down by fifties in a company, and be ready for the proposed repast. Debating in themselves, probably, what can be the use of such a proceeding, when really there is no supply of food to be distributed, they still execute His order. And then when all is made ready, He calls for the five loaves and two fishes, and, having blessed them, begins to break, and says to them, "Distribute." Marvellous loaves! broken, they are not diminished! distributed, they still remain! And so returning, again and again, to replenish their baskets, they continue the distribution, till the hungry multitude are all satisfied as in a full supply. In this manner the original command-"Give ye them to eat"—is executed to the letter. They have made the people sit down, they have brought the loaves, they have distributed, and He at every step has justified His order, by making their scanty stock as good as a full supply.

This narrative suggests and illustrates the following important principle

That men are often, and properly, put under obligation to do that for which they have, in themselves, no present ability.

This principle I advance, not as questioning the truth that ability, being necessary to an act, is necessary to complete obligation toward the same, but as believing and designing to

shew that God has made provision, in very many things, for the coming in upon the subject of ability, as he goes forward to execute the duties incumbent on him. God requires no man to do, without ability to do; but He does not limit His requirement by the measures of previous or inherently contained ability. In many, or even in a majority of cases, the endowment of power is to come after the obligation, occurring, step by step, as the exigencies demand. Of what benefit is it that the subject have a complete ability in himself, provided he only has it where and when it is wanted? When, therefore, I maintain that men are often required to do that for which they have no present ability in themselves, I do it in the conviction that God has made provision, in many ways, for the enlargement of our means and powers so as to meet our emergencies. And He does this, we shall see, on a large scale, and by system -does it in the natural life, and also in the works and experiences of the life of faith.

Thus, to begin at the very lowest point of the subject, it is the nature of human strength and fortitude bodily to have an elastic measure, and to be so let forth or extended as to meet the exigencies that arise. Within certain limits, for man is limited in everything, the body gets the strength it wants, in the exercise for which it is wanted. The body is not like mechanical tools and engines, which never acquire any degree of strength by use and the strain to which they are put, but rather begin to fail as they begin to be used; but it gains power for exertion by exertion, and sustains its competency in the same way. It is able to endure and conquer, because it has endured and conquered. God, therefore, may fitly call a given man to a course of life that requires much robustness and a high power of physical endurance, on the ground that when he is fully embarked in his calling, the robustness will come, or will be developed in it and by means of it, though previously it seemed not to exist. Indeed the physical imbecility of some men will be the great crime of their life, and they will be held answerable for it, on the simple ground that they had too little courage and were too self-indulgent to throw themselves on any such undertaking as a true Christian manliness required.

There is yet another law pertaining to bodily capacity, which is more remarkable—viz., that muscular strength and endurance