may dwell in your hearts by faith." This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles was, according to him, the great mystery of Love. A Love, brighter, deeper, wider, higher, than the largest human heart had ever yet dreamed of. But the apostle tells us it is, after all, but a glimpse of the love of God. How should we learn it more? How should we comprehend the whole meaning of the Epiphany? By sitting down to read works of theology? The Apostle Paul tells us — - No. You must love, in order to understand love. "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length, and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God than a thousand sermons; one act of unselfishness, of real self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast and "those who are out of the way," vll tell us more of the meaning of the Epiphany to an whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.

22

XVI.

[Preached January 25, 1852.]

THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.

CORINTHIANS viii. 7–13. — “Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither if we eat are we the better; neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee, which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."

WE have already divided this chapter into two branches, the former portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we endeavored to expound last Sun day, but it may be well briefly to recapitulate the prin ciples of that discourse in a somewhat different form. Corinth, as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea-coast, having a large and free communication

with all foreign nations; and there was also within it, and going on amongst its inhabitants, a free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of communicating the philosophy and truths of those days to each other. Now, it is plain that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the Gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting itself to them, as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so in Corinth the Gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes and all sects; and a large number of these attached themselves to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, as the most accredited expounder of Christianity, the "royal law of liberty." But it seems, from what we read in this epistle, that a large number of these men received Christianity as a thing. intellectual, and that alone, and not as a thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the affections. And so this liberty became to them almost all; they ran into sin or went to extravagar.ce; they rejoiced in their freedom from the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples, which bound their weaker brethren; but had no charity-none of that intense charity which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still struggling in the delusions and darkness from which they themselves were free. More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of expressing their opinions in the Church, merely for the sake of exhibiting the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been showered upon them so largely; until, by degrees, those very assemblies became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to numerous irregularities, which we find severely

rebuked by the Apostle Paul. Their women in the emancipation which had been given to tian community, laid aside the old habits of a had been consecrated so long by Grecian a custom, and appeared with their heads un the Christian community. Still further tha Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all and seemed more a meeting for licentious gr where "one was hungry, and another was dr a place in which earthly drunkenness, the m ment of the appetites, had taken the place o charity towards each other. And the same this love of mere liberty, liberty in itselfitself in many other directions. Holding by dom, their philosophy taught that the bodyflesh-was the only cause of sin; that the sou and pure; and that, therefore, to be free body would be entire, perfect, Christian And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine, in Corinth, where immortality was taught from, and in opposition to, the doctrine of the tion. And afterwards they went on with the sions about liberty, to maintain that the body by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer ca sin; and that in the evil which was done by the soul had taken no part. And, therefor to them but as a name, from which a Chris science was to be freed altogether. So that, of their number had fallen into grievous sin, committed fornication, "such as was not so named among the Gentiles," so far from be bled by it, they were "puffed up," as if th exhibiting to the world an enlightened, rue

Christianity, separate from all prejudices. To such a society, and to such a state of mind, the Apostle Paul preached, in all its length, breadth, and fulness, tho humbling doctrines of the Cross of Christ. He taught that knowledge was one thing, that charity was another thing; that "knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up." He reminded them that love was the perfection of knowledge. In other words, his teaching came to this: there are two kinds of knowledge-the one, the knowledge of the intellect; the other, the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God never can be known; He must be known by Love; for, "if any man love God, the same is known of Him." Here, then, we have arrived, in another way, at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived last Sunday. Here are two kinds of knowledge-secular knowledge and Christian knowledge; and Christian knowledge is this: to know different p

Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the law of Christian conscience. You will observe that it divides itself into two branches, the first containing an exposition of the law itself, and the second the Christian applications which flow out of this exposition.

I. The way in which the apostle expounds the law of Christian conscience is this: Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it sins against and transgresses the law of God, by doing that which it believes to be wrong; not so much what is wrong as what appears to it to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7th and 8th verses. The apostle tells the Corinthians- these strong-minded Corinthians