punishments: Do this, and I will reward you; do it not, and you will be punished. So long as under law, salutary and necessary; but only while under law. He is free when he discerns principles, and at the same time has got, by habit, the will to obey. So that rules have done for him a double work taught him the principle, and facilitated obedience to it. Distinguish, however. In point of time, law is first; in point of importance, the Spirit. In point of time, Charity is the end of the com. mandment; in point of importance, first and foremost. The first thing a boy has to do, is to learn implicit obedience to rules. The first thing in importance for a man to learn is, to sever himself from maxims, rules, laws. Why? That he may become an Antinomian or a Latitudinarian? No. He is severed from submission to the maxim, because he has got allegianco to the principle. He is free from the rule and the law, because he has got the Spirit written in his heart. This is the Gospel. A man is redeemed by Christ so far as he is not under the law; he is free from the law so far as he is free from the evil which the law restrains; he progresses so far as there is no evil in him which it is an effort to keep down; and perfect salvation and liberty are, when we, who, though having the first fruits of the Spirit, yet groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption,-" to wit, the redemption of the body," shall have been freed in body, soul, and spirit, from the last traces of the evil which can only be kept down by force. In other words, so far as Christ's statement is true of us, "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." XX. [Preached February 21, 1853.] THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHE LUKE XV. 31, 32. "And he said unto him, Son, thou art e and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should and be glad for this thy brother was dead, and is alive lost, and is found.” THERE are two classes of sins. There are s by which man crushes, wounds, malevolently his brother man-those sins which speak of tyrannical, and selfish heart. Christ met th denunciation. There are other sins by which injures himself. There is a life of reckless ence; there is a career of yielding to ungo propensities, which most surely conducts to edness and ruin, but makes a man an object passion rather than of condemnation. The re which sinners of this class met from Christ was by strange and pitying mercy. There was no sentiment on His lips. He called sin sin, an guilt. But yet there were sins which His lips sco and others over which, containing in themselv own scourge, His heart bled. That which was choly, and marred, and miserable, in this wor more congenia! to the heart of Christ than that was proudly happy. It was in the midst of a triumph, and all the pride of a procession, that He paused to weep over ruined Jerusalem. And if we ask the rea son why the character of Christ was marked by this melancholy condescension, it is that IIe was in the midst of a world of ruins, and there was nothing there to gladden, but very much to touch with grief. He was here to restore that which was broken down and crumbling into decay. An enthusiastic antiquarian, standing amidst the fragments of an ancient temple, surrounded by dust and moss, broken pillar, and defaced architrave, with magnificent projects in his mind of restoring all this to former majesty, to draw out to light from mere rubbish the ruined glories, and therefore stooping down amongst the dank ivy and the rank nettles-such was Christ amidst the wreck of human nature. He was striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was searching out in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He might build it up again, in fair proportions, a holy temple to the Lord. Therefore He labored among the guilty; therefore He was the companion of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom society counted undone; therefore He loved to bind up the bruised and the broken-hearted; therefore His breath fanned the spark which seemed dying out in the wick of the expiring taper, when men thought it was too late, and that the hour of hopeless profligacy was come. It was that feature in His character that tender, hoping, en. couraging spirit of His-which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon as characteristic: "A bruised reed will He not break." It was an illustration of this spirit which He gave in the parable which forms the subject of our con sideration to-day. We find the occasion which drew it from Him in the commencement of this chapter: "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sin ners for to hear Him. And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." It was then that Christ conde scended to offer an excuse, or an explanation of His conduct. And His excuse was this: It is natural, humanly natural, to rejoice more over that which has been recovered than over that which has been never lost. He proved that by three illustrations taken from human life. The first illustration, intended to show the feelings of Christ in winning back a sinner, was the joy which the shepherd feels in the recovery of a sheep from the mountain wilderness. The second was the satisfaction which a person feels for a recovered coin. The last was the gladness which attends the restora tion of an erring son. Now, the three parables are alike in this, that they all describe more or less vividly the feelings of the Re deemer on the recovery of the lost. But the third parable differs from the other two in this, that, besides the feelings of the Saviour, it gives us a multitude of particulars respecting the feelings, the steps, and the motives, of the penitent, who is reclaimed back to goodness. In the two first the thing lost is a coin or a sheep. It would not be possible to find any picture of remorse or gladness there. But in the third parable the thing lost is not a lifeless thing, nor a mute thing, but a being, the workings of whose human heart are all described. So that the subject opened out to us is a more extensive one not merely the feelings of the finder, God in Christ, but, besides that, the sonsations of the wanderer himself. In dealing with this parable, this is the line which we shall adopt: We shall look at the picture which it draws of- II. God's expostulation with the saint. I. God's treatment of the penitent divides itself in this parable into three distinct epochs: the period of alienation, the period of repentance, and the circumstances of a penitent reception. We shall consider all these in turn. The first truth exhibited in this parable is the alienation of man's heart from God. Homelessness, distance from our Father that is man's state by nature in this world. The youngest son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country. Brethren, this is the history of worldliness. It is a state far from God; in other words, it is a state of homelessness. And now let us ask what that means. To English hearts it is not necessary to expound elaborately the infinite meanings which cluster round that blessed expression "home." Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other, It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defence, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awk wardness, and without any dread of ridicule. Let a man travel where he will, home is the place to which |