a hope for the future," to seek and to save that which was lost."

III. A peculiarity in His mode of treatment. How were those lost ones to be restored? The human plans are reducible to three. Government have tried chastisement for the reclamation of offenders. For ages that was the only expedient known either to church or state. Time has written upon it Failure. I do not say that penal severity is not needful. Per haps it is, for protection, and for the salutary expres sion of indignation against certain forms of evil. But as a system of reclamation it has failed. Did the rack ever reclaim, in heart, one heretic? Did the scaffold ever soften one felon? One universal fact of history replies: Where the penal code was most sanguinary, and when punishments were most numerous, crime

was most abundant.

Again, society has tried exclusion for life. I do not pretend to say that it may not be needful. It may be necessary to protect your social purity, by banishing offenders of a certain sort forever. I only say for recovery it is a failure. Who ever knew one case where the ban of exclusion was hopeless, and the shame of that exclusion reformed? Did we ever hear of a fallen creature made moral by despair? Name, if you can, the publican or the harlot, in any age, brought back to goodness by a Pharisee, or by the system of a Pharisee.

And once more, some governors have tried the system of indiscriminate lenity: they forgave great criminals, trusting all the future to gratitude; they passed over great sins, they sent away the ringleaders of

rebellion with honors heaped upon them: they thought this was the Gospel; they expected dramatic emotion to work wonders. How far this miserable system has succeeded, let those tell us who have studied the history of our South African colonies for the last twenty years. We were tired of cruelty: we tried sentiment we trusted to feeling. Feeling failed: we only made hypocrites, and encouraged rebellion by impunity. Inexorable severity, rigorous banishment, indiscriminate and mere forgivingness, all are failures. In Christ's treatment of guilt we find three peculiar ities: sympathy, holiness, firmness.

was,

1. By human sympathy. In the treatment of Zaccheus this was almost all. We read of almost nothing else as the instrument of that wonderful reclamation. One thing only, Christ went to his house self-invited. But that one was everything. Consider it: Zaccheus if he were like other publicans, a hard and hardened man. He felt people shrink from him in the streets. He lay under an imputation; and we know how that feeling of being universally suspected and misinterpreted makes a man bitter, sarcastic, and defiant. And so the outcast would go home, look at his gold, rejoice in the revenge he could take by false accusations; felt a pride in knowing that they might hate, but could not help fearing him; scorned the world, and shut up his heart against it.

At last, one whom all men thronged to see, and all men honored, or seemed to honor, came to him, offered to go home and sup with him. For the first time for many years, Zaccheus felt that he was not despised, and the flood-gates of that avaricious, shut heart were opened in a tide of love and generosity.

"Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him four-fold."

He was reclaimed to human feeling by being taught that he was a man still; recognized and treated like a man. A Son of Man had come to "seek" him, the lost. 2. By the exhibition of Divine holiness.

The holiness of Christ differed from all earthly, common, vulgar holiness. Wherever it was, it elicited a sense of sinfulness and imperfection. Just as the purest-cut crystal of the rock looks dim beside the diamond, so the best men felt a sense of guilt growing distinct upon their souls. When the Anointed of God came near, "Depart from me," said the bravest and truest of them all, "for I am a sinful man, O Lord."

But, at the same time, the holiness of Christ did not awe men away from Him, nor repel them. It inspired them with hope. It was not that vulgar, unapproachable sanctity which makes men awkward in its presence, and stands aloof. Its peculiar character. istic was, that it made men enamored of goodness. It "drew all men unto Him."

You say,

The first

This is the difference between greatness that is first rate and greatness which is second-rate,-between heavenly and earthly goodness. The second-rate and the earthly draws admiration on itself. "How great an act, how good a man!" rate and the heavenly imparts itself, inspires a spirit. You feel a kindred something in you that rises up to meet it, and draws you out of yourself, making you better than you were before, and opening out the infinite possibilities of your life and soul.

And such preeminently was the holiness of Christ. Had some earthly great or good one come to Zaccheus' house, a prince or a nobleman, his feeling would have been, What condescension is there! But, when He came whose every word and act had in it Life and Power, no such barren reflection was the result; but, instead, the beauty of holiness had become a power within him, and a longing for selfconsecration. 'Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him four fold."

3. By Divine sympathy, and by the Divine Image, exhibited in the speaking act of Christ, the lost was sought and saved. He was saved, as alone all fallen men can be saved. Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, he was changed into the same image." And this is the very essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are redeemed by the Life of God without us, manifested in the Person of Christ, kindling into flame the Life of God that is within us. Without Him we can do nothing.

Without Him the warmth that was in Zaccheus' heart would have smouldered uselessly away. Trough Him it became Life and Light, and the lost was saved.

XVII.

[Preached January 16, 1853.]

THE SANCTIFICATION OF CHRIST.

JOHN Xvii. 19. "And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.'

THE prayer in which these words occur is given to us by the Apostle John alone. Perhaps only St. John could give it, for it belongs to the peculiar province of his revelation. He presents us with more of the heart of Christ than the other apostles; with less of the outward manifestations. He gives us more conversations, fewer miracles; more of the inner life, more of what Christ was, less of what Christ did.

St. John's mind was not argumentative, but intuitive. There are two ways of reaching truth: by reasoning out, and by feeling out. All the profoundest truths are felt out. The deep glances into truth are got by Love. Love a man, that is the best way of understanding him. Feel a truth, that is the only way of comprehending it. Not that you can put your sense of such truths into words, in the shape of accurate maxims or doctrines; but the truth is reached, notwithstanding. Compare 1 Cor. ii. 15, 16.