truly as I do, when from the heart I speak to the hearts of my people. Christianity is not a Sunday garment, to put on the first day of the week, and then to be immediately taken off the wearer, fearful lest it should be soiled in the world's dusty roads-that is not Christianity. Christianity is not a splendid procession, a gorgeous ceremony, a beautiful rite; but it is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. What is your view, then, of God? Do you think of him with awe, with dismay? Do you pray to him exactly as a criminal in the dock would do to a judge about to pronounce sentence upon him?—that is not Christianity. You may go to God, if you are baptized with the true baptism, not as a criminal, to deprecate his wrath, but as a son and child, to seek a Father's grand benediction. It is the grand peculiarity of the gospel, that it brings us into communion with God the Father, and that we may approach him with confiding love, with all the absence of suspicion with which a loving child flies to the bosom of its loving mother, finding there a shelter from the stranger's gaze, and a protection from the perils that assaif; complete, unsuspected, and entire. I believe that there is no better test of our Christianity, than the feelings that we have in reference to God.

What think you of death? Let conscience answer that. I do not say you should love death - that would be absurd.

death to be a most

I have often said, that I believe unnatural thing; have you not noticed that the brute creation feel it so? When a dog dies, as if conscious that death is the projected shadow of Adam's sin, he runs into a hole or nook that none may look on. What is that but the brute ⚫ creation groaning for deliverance, and giving evidence that sin has entered, and so death has passed upon all. I do not ask you, then, do you seek to die; I do not say that you should love death we cannot love it- it is impossible;

but I ask, if it were to come, which it must, and it is well we know not when – whether it overtakes you in its dreadest aspect, as in the case of the crew of the Amazon, or whether it comes in its more quiet movements, when surrounded with sympathizing friends—I ask, if it come as a friend, could you say, I will welcome it? If it come as a foe, could you say, I will defy it; and will be content to pass through the valley, drear and dark as it is, for the sake of what is beyond it-I will enter it with unfaltering footstep, for "thy rod and thy staff they comfort me?"

Let me ask, in the next place, your conscience, and let your conscience answer, what do you think of the great white throne? Would you feel now that your judge is, and was, your Saviour? Would you recognize, in his accents, those of Him who loved you, and washed you from your sins in his own blood?. Can you begin the triumphant pæan of an apostle, and say, "All things are mine, life, death, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, things present, things past, and things to come; all are mine, for I am Christ's, and Christ is God's?” Can you say, in the language of lofty, but magnificent and Christian defiance, "Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?" Let your conscience answer; let the questions that I ask find an answer, not an echo there.

What do you think, I ask, of God's holy word? Is it to you a very dull book, a very dry book, a very uninteresting book? or is it the book of your study? Do you feel it to be full of seams of gold, so that he who digs deepest gathers most? Do you find that word like a glorious ocean, whose floor is covered with precious pearls, so that he who dives oftenest and deepest, brings up most? Do you regard it as

the light to your path, the canon of your faith, by which you test difficulties? the canon of your life, by which you try all its features?

What does your conscience answer respecting the Lord's day? Is it the most precious of all? Is it the sweetest, even, as it has been called, the princess of the week, a transcript in spirit, if not in fact, on the earth that now is, from the joyous heaven that will be? And are you glad when Saturday comes? and are you sorry, if a Christian should be sorry, when Sabbath closes? Beautiful idea, there is one day in the week when the greatest and the poorest in the land can meet together, and say, We are peers, and God is the Maker of us all! What a noble equality is this, what a real and substantial brotherhood! Do not wonder that ministers of the gospel seek so often to get the Sabbath vindicated- its extinction would be an irreparable loss. I would rather see all our cathedrals, beautiful as they are, swept to the bottom of the sea, than that day profaned, and snatched from the poor man's home, and from all men's sanctuary. How do you love the Lord's day? I do not mean a Jewish Sabbath; I do not advocate the very peculiar views that some have; it is a joyous and holy day; God blessed it, not cursed it it is a festival, not a fast; it is a day for all that improves our hearts and instructs our minds for expressing our wants in prayer and our thanks in praise. If we be Christ's we love it.

What do we think of the Lord's table? Do we regard it as a resting-place, the recurrence of which, time after time, we rejoice in? Do we come to the Lord's table, not as to an awful tragedy, but as to a glad and beautiful festival, a eucharistic or thanksgiving offering? God wishes us only good; it is our privilege to be there; it is his promise to meet us there; it is an occasion on which there should be many bounding hearts, and few if any heavy ones. It

is a day on which we meet a Father at a Father's board, and tell him of our failings, our falterings, and our mercies, and ask of him that blessing especially over the symbols of his love, which he rejoices to bestow. Can we say, that with all our falterings, and failings, and short-comings, and misgivings, the bent and strain of our hearts are towards joy, and holiness, and heaven? Can we say, there is much in me to deplore, still more that needs to be forgiven; much that will break out, worse, probably, than ever broke out before; and yet can each say, "For my rejoicing is the testimony of my conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, I have had my conversation in the world."

One word more, and I have done. True religion is not a thing political, nor a thing ecclesiastical, nor a thing corporate, but a thing personal, it is the answer of the individual conscience. You cannot be saved as one of a body, you must be saved individually. Whatever system goes to depreciate personal religion, is a mischievous one. That system that would shut the closet, or would rather cover up the text, "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet," in order to exalt the temple, only goes to destroy both; there must first be individual dealing with God, before there can be any true and acceptable public worship before him.

CHAPTER XI.

THE VICTORY OF FAITH.

"The steps of faith

Fall on the seeming void, and find
The rock beneath."

"And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.". GEN. vii. 5.

BELIEVERS gained victories in antediluvian days. We are told by another penman that Noah built the ark by faith; that by faith he entered into it, preached a righteousness that was the only title to salvation, and became himself, by faith, the heir of the righteousness which is by faith. (Heb. xi.) We are told in the one page of Scripture, that Noah lived, and walked, and triumphed by faith; we are told in another passage of Scripture, that he was righteous alone righteous - in that generation; and that because he believed, and was thus righteous, doing all that God commanded him, he was saved in the judgment that overtook and overwhelmed the world. There is no more contradiction here between the assertion that faith was all by the one penman, and the assertion that his personal righteousness was all by the other penman, than there is contradiction between Paul, who says we are justified by faith, and James, who says we are justified by works. The faith is the root and spring out of which the righteousness which is by faith, that is, sanctification of character, must continually proceed; and it was just because Noah lived by faith, that