Lastly, see how this incident testifies to the perfect humanity of Christ. The Saviour "marvelled:"-that wonder was no fictitious semblance of admiration. It was a It was a real genuine wonder. He had not expected to find such faith. The Son of God increased in wisdom as well as stature. He knew more at thirty than at twenty. There were things He knew at twenty which He had not known before. In the last year of His life He went to the fig-tree expecting to find fruit, and was disappointed. In all matters of eternal truth, principles which are not measured by more or less true, His knowledge was absolute; but it would seem that in matters of earthly fact which are modified by time and space, His knowledge was, like ours, more or less dependent upon experience.

Now we forget this; we are shocked at the thought of the partial ignorance of Christ, as if it were irreverence to think it; we shrink from believing that He really felt the force of temptation, or that the forsakenness on the Cross and the momentary doubt have parallels in our human life. In other words, we make that Divine Life a mere mimic representation of griefs that were not real, and surprises that were feigned, and sorrows that were theatrical.

But thus we lose the Saviour. For it is well to know that He was divine; but if we lose that truth, we should still have a God in heaven. But if there has been on this earth no real, perfect human life, no love that never cooled, no faith that never failed, which may shine as a loadstar across the darkness of our experience, a light to light amidst all convictions of our own meanness and all suspicions of others' littleness, why, we may have a religion, but we have not a Christianity. For if we lose Him as a Brother, we can not feel Him ás a Saviour.

'Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."Gal. vi. 1, 2.

It would be a blessed thing for our Christian society if we could contemplate sin from the same point of view from which Christ and His apostles saw it. But in this matter society is ever oscillating between two extremes-undue laxity and undue severity.

In one age of the Church—the days of Donatism, for instance-men refuse the grace of repentance to those who have erred: holding that baptismal privileges once forfeited can not be got back; that for a single distinct lapse there is no restoration.

In another age, the Church, having found out its error, and discovered the danger of setting up an impossible standard, begins to confer periodical absolutions and plenary indulgences, until sin, easily forgiven, is as easily committed.

And so too with societies and legislatures. In one period Puritanism is dominant and morals severe. There are no small faults. The statute-book is defiled with the red mark of blood, set opposite innumerable misdemeanors. In an age still earlier the destruction of a wild animal is punished like the murder of a man. Then in another period we have such a medley of sentiments and sickliness that we have lost all our bearings, and can not tell what is vice and what is goodness. Charity and toleration degenerate into that feeble dreaminess which refuses to be roused by stern views of life.

This contrast, too, may exist in the same age, nay, in the same individual. One man gifted with talent, or privileged by rank, outrages all decency: the world smiles, calls it eccentricity, forgives, and is very merciful and tolerant. Then some one unshielded by these advantages, endorsed neither by wealth nor birth, sins-not to one-tenth, nor oneten-thousandth part of the same extent: society is seized with a virtuous indignation, rises up in wrath, asks what is to become of the morals of the community if these things are committed, and protects its proprieties by a rigorous exclusion of the offender, cutting off the bridge behind him against his return forever.

Now the Divine character of the New Testament is shown in nothing more signally than in the stable ground from which it views this matter, in comparison with the shifting and uncertain standing-point from whence the world sees it. It says, never retracting nor bating, "The wages of sin is death." It speaks sternly, with no weak sentiment," Go, sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto thee." But then it accepts every excuse, admits every palliation: looks upon this world of temptation and these frail human hearts of ours, not from the cell of a monk or the study of a recluse, but in a large, real way; accepts the existence of sin as a fact, without affecting to be shocked or startled; assumes that it must needs be that offenses come, and deals with them in a large noble way, as the results of a disease which must be met -which should be, and which can be, cured.

I. The Christian view of other men's sin. II. The Christian power of restoration.

I. The first thing noticeable in the apostle's view of sin is, that he looks upon it as if it might be sometimes the result of a surprise. "If a man be overtaken in a fault." In the original it is anticipated, taken suddenly in front. As if circumstances had been beforehand with the man: as if sin, supposed to be left far behind, had on a sudden got in front, tripped him up, or led him into ambush.

All sins are not of this character. There are some which are in accordance with the general bent of our disposition, and the opportunity of committing them was only the first occasion for manifesting what was in the heart: so that if they had not been committed then, they probably would or must have been at some other time; and looking back to them we have no right to lay the blame on circumstanceswe are to accept the penalty as a severe warning meant to show what was in our hearts.

There are other sins of a different character. It seems as if it were not in us to commit them. They were, so to speak, unnatural to us: you were going quietly on your way, thinking no evil, suddenly temptation, for which you were not prepared, presented itself, and before you knew where you were, you were in the dust, fallen.

As, for instance, when a question is suddenly put to a man which never ought to have been put, touching a secret of his own or another's. Had he the presence of mind or adroitness, he might turn it aside, or refuse to reply. But being unprepared and accosted suddenly, he says hastily that which is irreconcilable with strict truth; then, to substantiate and make it look probable, misrepresents or invents something else; and so he has woven round himself a mesh which will entangle his conscience through many a weary day and many a sleepless night.

It is shocking, doubtless, to allow ourselves even to admit that this is possible; yet no one knowing human nature from men, and not from books, will deny that this might befall even a brave and true man. St. Peter was both; yet this was his history. In a crowd, suddenly, the question was put directly, "This man also was with Jesus of Nazareth." Then came a prevarication-a lie; and yet another. This was a sin of surprise. He was overtaken in a fault.

Every one of us admits the truth of this in his own case. Looking back to past life, he feels that the errors which have most terribly determined his destiny were the result

of mistake. Inexperience, a hasty promise, excess of trust, incaution, nay, even a generous devotion, have been fearfully, and, as it seems to us, inadequately chastised. There may be some undue tenderness to ourselves when we thus palliate the past: still, a great part of such extenuation is only justice.

Now the Bible simply requires that we should judge others by the same rule by which we judge ourselves. The law of Christ demands that what we plead in our own case, we should admit in the case of others. Believe that in this or that case which you judge so harshly, the heart, in its deeps, did not consent to sin, nor by preference love what is hateful; simply admit that such an one may have been overtaken in a fault. This is the large law of charity.

1. Again, the apostle considers fault as that which has left a burden on the erring spirit. "Bear ye one another's burdens."

For we can not say to the laws of God, I was overtaken. We live under stern and unrelenting laws, which permit no excuse, and never heard of a surprise. They never send a man who has failed once back to try a second chance. There is no room for a mistake; you play against them for your life; and they exact the penalty inexorably, “Every man must bear his own burden." Every law has its own appropriate penalty; and the wonder of it is, that often the severest penalty seems set against the smallest transgression. We suffer more for our vices than our crimes; we pay dearer for our imprudences than even for our deliberate wickedness.

Let us examine this a little more closely. One burden laid on fault is that chain of entanglement which seems to drag down to fresh sins. One step necessitates many others. One fault leads to another, and crime to crime. The soul gravitates downward beneath its burden. It was profound knowledge indeed which prophetically refused to limit Peter's 'Verily I say unto thee. . . . thou shalt deny

sin to once. Me thrice."

We will try to describe that sense of burden. A fault has the power sometimes of distorting life till all seems hideous and unnatural. A man who has left his proper nature, and seems compelled to say and do things unnatural and in false show, who has thus become untrue to himself, to him life and the whole universe becomes untrue. He can grasp nothing; he does not stand on fact; he is living as in a dream-himself a dream. All is ghastly, unreal, spectral. A burden is on him as of a nightmare. He moves about in nothingness and shadows, as if he were not. His own exist

ence swiftly passing might seem a phantom life, were it not for the corroding pang of anguish in his soul, for that at least is real!

2. Add to this, the burden of the heart weighing on itself.

It has been truly said that the human heart is like the millstone, which, if there be wheat beneath it, will grind to purposes of health; if not, will grind still, at the will of the wild wind, but on itself. So does the heart wear out itself against its own thought. One fixed idea-one remembrance, and no other one stationary, wearing anguish. This is remorse, passing into despair; itself the goad to fresh and wilder crimes.

The worst of such a burden is that it keeps down the soul from good. Many an ethereal spirit, which might have climbed the heights of holiness, and breathed the rare and difficult air of the mountain-top, where the heavenliest spirituality alone can live, is weighed down by such a burden to the level of the lowest. If you know such an one, mark his history; without restoration, his career is done. That soul will not grow henceforth.

3. The burden of a secret.

Some here know the weight of an uncommunicated sin. They know how it lies like ice upon the heart. They know how dreadful a thing the sense of hypocrisy is; the knowledge of inward depravity, while all without looks pure as

snow to men.

How heavy this weight may be, we gather from these indications. First, from this strange, psychological fact. A man with a guilty secret will tell out the tale of his crimes as under the personality of another; a mysterious necessity seems to force him to give it utterance-as in the old fable of him who breathed out his weighty secret to the reeds. A remarkable instance of this is afforded in the case of that murderer, who, from the richness of his gifts and the enormity of his crime, is almost a historical personage, who, having become a teacher of youth, was in the habit of narrating to his pupils the anecdote of his crime with all the circumstantial particularity of fact, but all the while under the guise of a pretended dream. Such men tread forever on the very verge of a confession: they seem to take a fearful pleasure in talking of their guilt, as if the heart could not bear its own burden, but must give it outness.

Again, is it evidenced by the attempt to get relief in profuse and general acknowledgments of guilt. They adopt the language of religion; they call themselves "vile dust