demonstrated that the whole previous constitution of the universe might have been different, and the oak not struck.

Let us possess ourselves of this view of sin, for it is the true one. Separate acts of sin are but manifestations of one great principle. It was thus that the Saviour looked on the sins of His day. The Jews of that age had had no hand in the murder of Abel or Zacharias; but they were of kindred spirit with the men who slew them. Condemning their mur derers, they imitated their act. In that imitation they "allowed the deeds of their fathers;" they shared in the guilt of the act which had been consummated, because they had the spirit which led to it. "The blood of them all shall come on this generation." It was so, too, that Stephen looked on the act of his assassins. When God's glory streamed upon his face, he felt that the transaction going on then was not simply the violence of a mob in an obscure corner of the world—it was an outbreak of the Great Principle of evil. He saw in their act the resurrection of the spirit of those who had "resisted the Holy Ghost" in their day, slain the prophets, opposed Moses, crucified "the Just One;" and felt that their genuine descendants were now opposing themselves to the form in which Truth and Goodness were appearing in their day.

It is in this way only that you will be able, with any reality of feeling, to enter into the truth that your sins nailed Him to the cross: that the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all: that He died "not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad." If, for instance, indisputable evidence be given of the

saintliness of a man whose creed and views are not yours, and rather than admit that Good in him is Good, you invent all manner of possible motives to discredit his excellence, then let the thought arise: This is the resurrection of the spirit which was rampant in the days of Jesus; the spirit of those who saw the purest Goodness, and, rather than acknowledge it to be good, preferred to account for it as diabolical power. Say to yourself, I am verging on the spirit of the sin that was unpardonable; I am crucifying the Son of God afresh. If in society you hear the homage unrebuked,Honor to the rich man's splendid offering, instead of glory to the widow's humble mite,if you see the weak and defenceless punished severely for the sins which the great and strong do unblushingly, and even with the connivance and admiration of society, if you find sins of frailty placed on the same level with sins of pride and presumption, or if you find guilt of any kind palliated instead of mourned, then let the dreadful thought arise in the fulness of its meaning: I allow the deeds of those days; His blood shall come upon this generation. My sin, and your sin, the sin of all, bears the guilt of the Redeemer's sacrifice. It was vicarious. He suffered for what He never did. "Not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.”

To conclude. Estimate rightly the death of Christ. It was not simply the world's example—it was the world's sacrifice. He died not merely as a Martyr to the Truth. His death is the world's life. Ask yo what life is? Life is not exemption from penalty. Salvation is not escape from suffering and punishment.

The Redeemer suffered punishment; but the Redeemer's soul had blessedness in the very midst of punishment. Life is elevation of soul- nobleness -- Divine character. The spirit of Caiaphas was death: to receive all, and give nothing; to sacrifice others to himself. The spirit of Christ was life: to give and not receive; to be sacrificed, and not to sacrifice.. Hear Him again"He that loseth his life, the same shall find it." That is life: the spirit of losing all for Love's sake. That is the soul's life, which alone is blessedness and heaven. By realizing that ideal of humanity, Christ furnished the life which we appropriate only when we enter into His spirit.

Listen: Only by renouncing sin is His death to sin yours; only by quitting it are you free from the guilt of His blood; only by voluntary acceptance of the law of the Cross, self-surrender to the will of God, and self-devotion to the good of others as the law of your being, do you enter into that present and future heaven which is the purchase of his vicarious sacrifice.

X.

[Preached December 2, 1849.]

REALIZING THE SECOND ADVENT.

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JOB xix. 25-27. For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me."

THE hardest, the severest, the last lesson which man has to learn upon this earth, is submission to the will of God. It is the hardest lesson, because to our blinded eyesight it often seems a cruel will. It is a severe lesson, because it can be only taught by the blighting of much that has been most dear. It is the last lesson, because, when a man has learned that, he is fit to be transplanted from a world of wilfulness to a world in which one Will alone is loved, and only one is done. All that saintly experience ever had to teach resolves itself into this, the lesson how to say affectionately, "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Slowly and stubbornly our hearts acquiesce in that. The holiest in this congregation, so far as he has mastered the lesson, will acknowledge that many a sore and angry feeling against his God had to be subdued, many a dream of earthly brightness broken, and many

a burning throb stilled in a proud, resentful heart, before he was willing to suffer God to be sovereign in His own world, and do with him and his as seemed. Him best. The earliest record that we have of this struggle in the human bosom is found in this book of Job. It is the most ancient statement we have of the perplexities and mysteries of life, so graphic, so true to nature, that it proclaims at once that what we are reading is drawn not from romance, but life. It has been said that religious experience is but the fictitious creation of a polished age, when fanciful feelings are called into existence by hearts bent back, in reflex action and morbid, on themselves. We have an answer to that in this book. Religion is no morbid fancy. In the rough rude ages when Job lived, when men did not dwell on their feelings as in later centuries, the heart-work of religion was, manifestly, the same earnest, passionate thing that it is now. The heart's misgivings were the same beneath the tent of an Arabian Emir which they are beneath the roof of a modern Christian. Blow after blow fell on the Oriental chieftain: one day he was a father, a prince, the lord of many vassals and many flocks, and buoyant in one of the best of blessings, health; the next, he was a childless, blighted, ruined man. And then it was that there came from Job's lips those yearnings for the quiet of the grave, which are so touching, so real; and, consid ering that some of the strongest of the Elect of God have yielded to them for a moment, we might almost say so pardonable: "I should have been at restwhere the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. There the prisoners rest together: they hear not the voice of the oppressor. Wherefore is