cere man is brought into contact with the awful God, and his subtlety falls from him. He becomes real at once. Every insincere habit of mind shrivels in the face of God. One clear, true glance into the depths of Being, and the whole man is altered. The name changes because the character has changed. No longer Jacob the supplanter, but Israel the Prince of God —the champion of the Lord, who had fought with God and conquered; and who, henceforth, will fight for God, and be His true, loyal soldier: a larger, more unselfish name hona larger and more unselfish man est and true, at last. No man becomes honest till he has got face to face with God. There is a certain insincerity about us alla something dramatic. One of those dreadful moments which throw us upon our selves, and strip off the hollowness of our outside. show, must come before the insincere is true.

And again, young brethren, such a moment, at least of truthfulness, ought to have been this morning. Let the old pass. Let the name of the world pass into the Christian name. Baptism and Confirmation: the one gives, and the other reminds us of the giving of a better name and a truer. Henceforth be men. Lose the natural frailty, whatever it is. See God, and you will lose it.

To conclude; here is a question for each man sep arately, What is the name of your God? Not in the sense of this age, but in the sense of Jacob's age. What is the Name of the Deity you worship? In the present modern sense of Name, by which nothing more than epithet is meant, of course the reply is easy. The name of yours is the God of Christian worship the three-fold One- the author of Exist

ence, manifested in Divine humanity, commingling with us as pure spirit the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That, of course, you say is the name of your God. Now, put away names - give words to the winds. What do you adore in your hear. of hearts? What is the name oftenest on your lips in your unfet tered, spontaneous moments? If we overheard your secret thoughts, who and what is it which is to you the greatest and the best that you would desire to realize? The character of the rich man, or the suc cessful, or the admired? Would the worst misery which could happen to you be the wreck of property -the worst shame, not to have done wrong, but to have sunk in the estimation of society? Then, in the classifications of earth, which separate men into Jews, Christians, Mahometans, &c., you may rank as a wor shipper of the Christian's God. But in the nomencla ture of heaven, where names cannot stand for things, God sees you as an idolater-your highest is not His highest. The Name that is above every name is not the description of your God.

For life. and death we have made our choice. The life of Christ the life of truth and love; and if it must be, as the result of that, the Cross of Christ, with the obloquy and shame that wait on truth — that is the name before which we bow. In this world "there are Gods many, and Lords many; but to us there is one Lord, tho Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

IV.

[Preached August 12th, 1849.]

CHRISTIAN PROGRESS BY OBLIVION OF THE PAST.

PHIL. iii. 13, 14.

"Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.".

THE first thing which strikes us, on reading these verses, is, that the Apostle Paul places himself on a level with the persons whom he addresses. He speaks to them as frail, weak men; and he gives them in himself a specimen of what frailty and weakness can achieve in the strength of Christ. And it is for this reason that the passage before us is one of the most encouraging in all the writings of St. Paul. For there is one aspect in which the apostle is presented to us, which is, perhaps, a depressing one.. When we look at his almost superhuman career, reverence and admiration we must feel; but so far does he seem removed from ordinary life, that imitation appears out of the question. Let us select but two instances of this discouraging aspect of the apostle's life. Most of us know the feeling of unaccountable depression which rests upon us when we find ourselves alone in a foreign town, with its tide of population ebbing and flowing

past us, a mass of human life in which we ourselves are nothing. But that was Paul's daily existence. He had consecrated himself to an almost perpetual exile. He had given up the endearments of domestic life for ever. Home, in this world, St. Paul had none. With a capacity for the tenderest feelings of our nature, he had chosen for his lot the task of living among strangers, and as soon as they ceased to be strangers quitting them again. He went on month by month attaching congregations to himself, and month by month dooming himself to severance. And yet, I know not that we read of one single trace of depression or discour agement suffered to rest on the apostle's mind. He seems to have been ever fresh and sanguine, the salient energy of his soul rising above the need of all human sympathy. It is the magnificent spectacle of missionary life, with more than missionary loneliness. There is something almost awful in the thought of a man who was so thoroughly in the next world that he needed not the consolations of this world. And yet, observe, there is nothing encouraging for us in this. It is very grand to look upon, very commanding, very full of awe; but it is so much above us, so little like anything human that we know of, that we content our. selves with gazing on him as on the gliding swallow's flight, which we wonder at, but never think of imi tating.

Now, let us look at one other feature in St. Paul's character-his superiority to those temptations which are potent with ordinary men. We say nothing of his being above the love of money: of his indifference to a life of comfort and personal indulgence. Those temptations only assail the lower part of our nature;

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and it is not saintliness to be above these: common excellence is impossible otherwise. But when we come to look for those temptations which master the higher and the nobler man,- ambition, jealousy, pride, it is not that we see them conquered by the apostle; they scarcely seem to have even lodged in his bosom. at all. It was open to the apostle, if he had felt the ambition, to make for himself a name, to become the leader of a party in Corinth and in the world. And yet remember we not how sternly he put down the thought, and how he labored to merge his individuality in the cause, and make himself an equal of inferior men? "Who, then, is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers, servants, by whom ye be lieved?"

Again, in respect of jealousy. Jealousy seems almost inseparable from human love. It is but the other side of love, the shadow cast by the light when the darker body intervenes. There came to him in prison that most cutting of all news to a minister's heart, that others were trying to supplant him in the affections of his converts. But his was that lofty love which cares less for reciprocation than for the well-being of the objects loved. The rival teachers were teaching from emulation; still they could not but bless by preaching to his disciples. What then? Notwithstanding every way, whether in pretence o in truth, "Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." Not a trace of jealousy in these words.

Once more: Degrading things were laid to his charge. The most liberal-minded of mankind was charged with bigotry. The most generous of men