mated all, vanquished all, and the "world cannot withstand its ancient conqueror."

This is the true Christianity, coming into contact with the soul of men, not as a soul-less speculation, but full of point and warning and pity, awakening the soul into an attention and interest most becoming its rank and destiny, if the message which now reaches it be true. Witnessed and enlightened by the Holy Ghost, the Gospel appears what it never seemed before. There might have been a cold conception of it. The living reality was not understood. It was nature's wintry scene, the frost-bound landscape, each leaf rigid, each drop congealed. The vernal breath has penetrated that death-like shroud, and now the branches wave in their verdure, the flowers expand in their fragrance, the streams murmur in their music: all is the freedom of motion, the fulness of instinct, the holiday of joy.

How evidently wrong and inconsistent does this view of Christianity prove them to be whose notion and practice of it carry them no further than its external observances and forms! A ritualism contents them. In it they find their satisfaction and expiation. They revolve in a circle of minute and superficial ceremonies. It is the bodily exercise which profiteth little. They serve not God with their spirit in the gospel of his Son. "The people draw near to Him with their mouths, and with their lips do honour him, but have removed their heart far from him.” "They have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof." Let these learn that the experience of the gospel is transcendently more than name and symbol: let them marvel no longer that they must be born again! Truth must be in the inward parts!

They who are conscious of religious declension are loudly rebuked if this be the true Christianity! They did run well. What carefulness it wrought in them! A spirit of slumber has fallen upon them. The things which remain are ready to die. They have left their first love. Where is the blessedness ye spake of? Return, ye backsliding children. Be filled with the Spirit. Seek the fervency of your earliest vows. Renew the beginning of your confidence. It was life from the dead. Your soul cannot be restored until your first cherished emotions shall

be renewed: until the kingdom of God shall sway you with its authority, and bind you with its force. You must be once more the subject of aroused interest, of stimulated action; loving the Lord your God with all your mind and heart and strength; awakened to the designs of the gospel towards you and others; "apprehending that for which you are also apprehended of Christ Jesus."

The unconverted should be afraid. To stand in any approximation to this kingdom and to fail of its blessings, supposes the most heinous guilt and most tremendous exclusion. It is a perilous thing to trifle with it. It is charged with a power, it is endued with a readiness, to revenge all disobedience. It is not indifferent. It endures not neutrality. It brooks not coldness. The King has sent forth a glorious bidding to the royal feast : "As many as ye find, bid to the marriage." But He must be wroth with them who make light of the overture or scorn of the banquet. Bow the knee. Kiss the sceptre. Accept the clemency. Receive the robe. Fill the chamber. Crowd the board. Eat and drink at His table in His kingdom. O may ye feel the power in which this kingdom marches on; it a power to subdue all things, a power to raise the dead!

What a contrast is this Kingdom with its mysterious might to Infidelity! That is cold, jejune, lifeless. It is a thing of negations. It has a torpedo touch. It is a death. It sweeps along like a blast of ice. It inspires nothing of lofty sentiment, it urges to nothing of generous movement. It petrifies all into rigour, selfishness, and hate. The gospel breathes only life, impels only benevolence, speaks only good-will to men. It is the power of a universal blessing.

And we may thank God with every grateful acknowledgment, and congratulate ourselves with every cheerful auspice, that all Christians are beginning to see Christianity in this power of its truth and life. One greater than Elias is among us restoring all things. He sitteth as a refiner. The external form no longer satisfies, but men dive in its inmost spirit. Missions instrumentally have given health to its heart and caused it to beat with its earliest pulsations. They have laid open the essence

and the hidden life. They have given back to the world the glow of the ancient faith. They have urged mighty movements in return. The power which is disimprisoned demands our own advance. It was, it is, the momentum, of far-spread operations. It still asks, it still necessitates, ample room and verge. The tree must not be bent down upon its root. The river must not be repelled upon its source. This power is fed by diffusion. Our life is in this zeal. Be ours the inwrought fervent prayer. Be ours the unutterable groan. Activity is our strength. And in the experience of the virtue of our principles, in the overflow of our joys, in the liberality of our sacrifices for the extension of the gospel,-our highest department of labour, our noblest reward of service,-may we receive a "second benefit,” a renewed baptism of this holy, benign, and tender Power,power which breathes in every doctrine, moves in every duty, expands in every principle, of the Christian system, - power which distinguishes it from every human scheme, "teaching as one having authority,"-power averse from all indifference and abhorrent from all insensibility,-power, dread, tender,-power all-pervading and all-assimilating,-power piercing as the lightning and distilling as the dew,-like the living Soul to the Body which it vivifies and directs,-like the Shechinah to the Temple, suffusing the vail with its light and thrilling the altar with its vibration!

SERMON IV.

THE RIGHT OF THE POOR.

MATT. xi. 5.

"AND THE POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM."

It is the master-piece of political science to bend every scheme of the enemy into the means of establishing the safety, confirming the institutions, and augmenting the resources, of the nation which he attacks: to direct the storm which he has awakened in such a manner that, while its fury shall fall upon him, it shall serve to root and consolidate the strength which he would overthrow. So to frustrate hostile intentions as to extract from them the instruments of defence and the occasions of glory, entitles the statesman to the highest praise.

It is the distinguishing art of military tactics to profit instantaneously by the mistakes of the opposite force, to throw it into confusion, to bring it under its own artillery, to break its line by its own ranks. The greatest victories ever won sprung from such stratagem, from sudden suggestions formed on sudden disasters;- -a weakness in the centre or in the extremes, an error in the position, has been seized in a moment, the meditated plan of the conflict has been cast aside, more able dispositions have been superseded, for the foe was self-destroyed.

It is a triumph of logic and not an ignoble one,—since its merit is rather to convict error than to determine truth,-when we can press an opponent on the ground of his own concessions, and can snatch the argument from his ill-disciplined grasp. Our cause thus requires no vindication: it is signalised by the failure of every attempt against it.

The sneer has long been turned against Christianity that it is the religion of the poor. This is supposed to be its brand of shame. But it is no recent detection of this characteristic, if it be adduced to discredit it in our age. In a remote antiquity it was for this very peculiarity derided and denounced. And however early the charge, the self-avowal was earlier still. The text is the confession of our religion. It bespeaks the fact. It anticipates any challenge on this account. It betrays no distrust, on this showing, of its excellence: it sees, in this anticipation, no compromise of its operation. It hides it not, it subdues it not, it excuses it not. It boasts of it. It glories in it. It wears the inscription as a frontlet on its most open, fearless, brow: it loves that this distinction should beam from it as the most effulgent mark of its divinity.

It would seem that, from the relentless treatment and severe imprisonment of John the Baptist, some of his disciples began not only to suspect his claims, but those of Jesus to whom he had borne testimony. To satisfy their doubts and resolve their embarrassments, he sent them at once to Him. Surely he needed, he sought, no assurance to confirm his own belief. He who had beheld the palpable descent of the Holy Ghost by the banks of Jordan, who had heard the voice which came from heaven, who had witnessed that awful inauguration of the "Beloved Son," could not have been visited by the most passing doubt. This is the answer, formally addressed to His precursor, but substantively intended for those who had conveyed the question. It is an appeal to what they have seen. It was the argument of his transcendent credentials. "Saw ye the seared eye-ball rolling in its socket? endeavouring to express a meaning and catch a sunbeam, but in vain? Mark now that once disfeatured countenance, the illumination of fair beauty and mental power playing there, the mind's purest thought, the heart's warmest feeling, gleaming, dissolving, in that new-kindled orb! Saw ye the cripple, heaving himself from his dreary pallet, crawling forth to breathe the refreshing air, and to beg by the way-side? helpless, wan, with down-cast countenance, and, when spurned by the passenger, shrinking into himself? Mark now that ruddy cheek,