(b) They may be "emboldened," encouraged to do the wrong. Without your moral strength they will imitate you and will be ruined. (c) It may ruin them. "And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died." Christ died for all, tasted death for every man, yet His death does not necessarily insure the salvation of any. What a solemn thought, that the conduct even of an advanced Christian may lead to the spiritual ruin of others! (2) The lack of it is a sin both against the weak brethren and against Christ. "When ye sin so against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ." Respect for the weak consciences of good men, Thirdly : Is exemplified in the sublime resolve of the apostle. "If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." Here is benevolent expediency, the strongest ground on which the temperance reformation can be wisely and effectively advocated. In this sublime utterance you have the self-sacrificing and magnanimous spirit of the Gospel. Give up all rather than ruin souls. Such an utterance as this is characteristic of Paul. "But I could wish that I myself were accursed for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh."

CONCLUSION.-Where, in the State or in the Church, can you find a man who approaches in spirit the sublime philanthropy of Paul? In the State we have men who call themselves reformers, who grow eloquent in proclaiming the rights of man and the glories of liberty, but can you find either in their speeches or deeds the matchless spirit of philanthropy, beaming and booming in these words of the apostle, "Wherefore if meat make

my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth?" But our reformers are, alas, more or less traders and hirelings. Aye, where in your Churches do you find preachers aglow with this unconquerable love for man? And yet this is Christianity, this is what the world wants, what it must have ere it can be morally redeemed. "There never did," says Sir Walter Scott, "and never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in a character which was a stranger to the exercise of resolute self-denial. Teach self-denial, and make its practice pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."

GRACE AND GIFTS.

"FOLLOW AFTER CHARITY," &c.-1 Cor. xiv. 1-33.

THERE are many separate verses in this paragraph implying or suggesting thoughts capable of being wrought out into sermonic sketches, but my purpose now is to take a homiletical glance at the whole. The following general propositions will bring all the parts into a logical connection.

I. THE GRACE OF CHARITY IS SUPERIOR TO ALL ENDOWMENTS. I say "charity," for I prefer the word to the word love, which the New Version gives as the substitute. Charity implies the highest forms of love, compassion, sympathy, benevolence. "Follow after charity and desire spiritual gifts." Whatever other

endowments you may possess or desire, do not neglect the cultivation of charity. The remarks of the iliustrious F. W. Robertson are so admirable on this point that I transcribe them here. In showing the difference between a grace and a gift, he says, "A grace does not differ from a gift in this, that the former is from God, and the latter from nature. As a creative power there is no such thing as nature, all is God's. A grace is that which has in it some moral quality, whereas a gift does not necessarily share in this. Charity implies a certain character, but a gift, as for instance that of tongues, does not. A man may be fluent, learned, skilful, and be a good man; likewise, another may have the same powers, and yet be a bad man— proud, mean, or obstinate. Now this distinction explains at once why graces are preferable. Graces are what the man is; but enumerate his gifts, and you will only know what he has. He is loving, he has eloquence, or medical skill, or legal knowledge, or the gift of acquiring languages, or that of healing. You only have to cut out his tongue, or to impair his memory, and the gift is gone. But on the contrary, you must destroy his very being, change him into another man, and obliterate his identity, before he ceases to be a loving man. Therefore, you may contemplate the gift separate from the man, and whilst you admire it, you may despise him. As many a gifted man is contemptible through being a slave to low vices, or to his own high gifts. But you cannot contemplate the grace separate from the man-he is loveable or admirable, according as he has charity, faith, or self-control. And hence the apostle bids the Corinthians undervalue gifts in comparison with

not let your admira

graces. "Follow after charity." But as to gifts they are not ourselves, but our accidents, like property, ancestors, birth, or position in the world. But hence, also, on the other hand, arises the reason of our due admiration of gifts, "desire spiritual gifts." Many religious persons go into the contrary extreme they call gifts dangerous, ignore them, sneer at them, and say they are of the world. No, says the apostle, "desire" them, look them in the face as goods: not the highest goods, but still desirable, like wealth or health. Only remember you are not wealthy or good because of them. And remember other people are not bound to honour you for them. Admire a Napoleon's genius, do not despise it, but do tion of that induce you to give honour to the man. Let there be no mere hero-worship, that false modern spirit which recognises the force that is in a man as the only thing worthy of homage. The subject of this chapter is not the principle on which graces are preferable as gifts, but the principle on which one gift is preferable to another, "Rather that ye may prophecy." Now the principle of this preference is very briefly stated. Of gifts, Paul prefers those which are useful to those that are showy. The gift of prophecy was useful to others, whilst that of tongues was only a luxury for self. The principle of this preference is stated generally in the twelfth verse, "Even so ye, forasmuch as ye were zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the Church."

In

II. SOME ENDOWMENTS ARE SUPERIOR TO OTHERS. the fifth verse the apostle says, "Greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues." In

this chapter it is taught that the didactic faculty is greater than the linguistic. Sense is better than sound, ideas are better than words. Ideas are the seed of character and the soul of history. Of all classes of ideas, religious ideas, ideas in relation to God, are the most salutary and sublime. A man may pronounce"sun," "universe," "God," in fifty different languages, and he is not necessarily richer in ideas concerning these than the man who can only speak them in his own vernacular. It often happens that the man who has the most aptitude in acquiring languages, and the most fluency in pronouncing them, has the least capacity either for attaining or communicating great ideas. But the language of which the apostle is here speaking, seems to have been of a very peculiar sort, an unintelligible vocal utterance. It was perhaps the inarticulate voice of new and strong emotions, an emotional language. It is not necessary to consider this gift as miraculous. We are so constituted that when there rises up in our souls a strong rush of tender emotions, we feel utterly incapable to put them into words. Sometimes they choke us. If expressed at all, they can only be in the quivering lip, and the gleaming eye, and the convulsive chest. No stranger or stronger emotions can enter a man's soul than those which Christianity awakens when it first takes possession of him. The groans, the sighs, the rapturous shouts, cannot be interpreted. Albeit they are a "gift," a gift of a high type, inasmuch as they are the expression of the most priceless states of soul. Such have been manifested in all great revivals of religion. In my younger days I have heard such untranslatable sounds under the mighty sermons of grand old Welsh preachers. The