of youth and happiness, and love him as he has loved you? Or will you do that to him which, if practised towards a parent or friend, you would confess to be the extreme of basenessneglect and grieve him so long as you are prosperous, and only run to him in your hour of need, to beg him to relieve you?"

But then if this sort of language should have any effect upon the mind, the Devil is not slow to prompt a way of escaping from it. We are answered by the question, "Why, are we not serving God already? What can be our fault or our danger, believing in the Scriptures, and leading an innocent life in the common employments and amusements of our age and station?" So it seems we cannot yet bring them to put to themselves that question which is likely to bring about most hapSt. John ix. pily its own answer, "What must I do to be saved?" They that see are blinded, because seeing in their own conceits, they never come to Christ to ask of him the means to see clearly. The fault and the danger of such persons is, that their nature is neither changed nor changing, that they do not live by faith in the Son of God, nor are led constantly by his Spirit. Nay, do not the very words of being led by the Spirit of God seem to them

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wild and foolish? I know very well that many have talked of being led by the Spirit of God, who were in fact never led by him; but I am sure that no Christian was ever led by him, without some thoughts and some prayers too for his leading; that none were ever sanctified by the Holy Ghost, who could practically use the language of the ignorant disciples of John in the Acts of the Apostles, "We have not so Acts xix. much as known whether there be any Holy Ghost." Their fault and their danger is, that Christ is not their bread of life,-that they do not deny themselves, that they do not love God more than their pleasure, nor love their neighbour as themselves. Their fault and their danger is, that they are not bringing forth the fruit of Christian works; that they are not growing in goodness by a constant struggle with their natural faults and bad tempers, and a constant prayer for help to him who can alone give them victory. Their fault and their danger is, that they care for the opinion of the world in matters of moral conduct, merely because it is the opinion of the world, without distinguishing when it agrees with the judgment of Christians, and when it does not. Thus they form their lives by a crooked rule; because valuing the opinion of

the world, they naturally act according to it; for not one man in ten thousand has strength enough to forfeit worldly honour, if he has been trained up from his youth to think it of the highest value. Their fault and their danger finally is, that they are living here as if they were never to live any where else; that they are not thinking of the great and real manhood to which they are every day fast growing up; that they are not learning the character which can alone fit them to be citizens of heaven.

Such is unhappily the case with thousands; but how can they be persuaded to believe it and to feel it? How can they be raised to the excellence of the Gospel standard who never study that Gospel? How can they be persuaded to be dissatisfied with their own progress, to whom self-examination, or any anxious watchfulness over their characters is a thing unknown? St. Luke says in the Acts of the Acts xii. Apostles,

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"that as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." What think we does he mean by those "ordained to eternal life?" Those doubtless whose hearts God had mercifully saved from our three great dangers,dull and obstinate hardness,-utter lightness and thoughtlessness, and carefulness about

earthly things only. If they were without these things, the seed might find its way into their hearts, and grow up, and bring forth fruit; but on the hard road side, or the shallow stony soil, or the foul and choked up mass of weeds and briars, and how large a proportion of human characters are represented by some one or other of these images! it will ever come to nothing. Knowing that this is so, with all past experience and all our knowledge of mankind actually as they are, we might be almost tempted to sit down in despair, and cease to call on those who we feel morally certain beforehand will refuse to heed the call. But so did not Christ himself, who was pure from all spot of sin; much less then must those who are sinners themselves be impatient of the hardness and impenitence of their brethren. We must not be weary in well doing, we must labour, all of us who are Christians indeed, to aid in the first great work of the Holy St. John Spirit, to try and convince the world of sin; that little part of the world, I mean, with which we each have to do in our daily living, and whom our words, and our lives agreeing with our words, may possibly influence. To preach the Gospel in one sense, that is, to preach it publicly in the Church, is the business

xvi. 8.

indeed of the Christian minister only; but to preach it by his daily talking and daily acting, to help forward Christ's kingdom in his own household and neighbourhood, this is the work of all Christ's soldiers, in this sense we are all his ministers, and necessity is laid upon us all; yea, woe is unto us if we preach not the Gospel; in season and out of season,—with the same earnestness that we would push any favourite scheme, always watching for an opportunity to recommend it, and only forcing ourselves to keep it sometimes out of sight, lest an unwise zeal should spoil its own endeaThe point to which every one who is saved must be brought at some time or other of his life,that point to which we should strive to bring all those who have not yet reached it,-is to have the feeling expressed in the words of the text," what must I do to be saved?" Let a man once be thoughtful about himself,let him look to his end, and to what comes after death, and feel that he is daily fitting himself according to his conduct for heaven or for hell, and we then must acknowledge the first work of the Spirit in his heart, and may hope

vours.

that he who has begun it will also complete it to Philip. i. 6. the day of Jesus Christ; that is, that he will

make the man better and better till he stands