tion. First let a man know that all his past is wrong and sinful; then let him fix his eye on the love of God in Christ loving him—even him, the guilty one. Is there no strength in that--no power in the knowledge that all that is gone by is gone, and that a fresh, clear future is open? It is not the progress of virtue that God asks for, but progress in saintliness, empowered by hope and love.

Lastly, let each man put this question to himself, “Dare I look on ?" With an earnest Christian, it is "reaching forth to those things which are before." Progress ever. And then just as we go to rest in this world tired, and wake up fresh and vigorous in the morning, so does the Christian go to sleep in the world's night, weary with the work of life, and then on the resurrection-day he wakes in his second and his brighter morning. It is well for a believer to look

on.

Dare you? Remember, out of Christ, it is not wisdom, but madness to look on. You must look back, for the longest and the best day is either past or passing. It will be winter soon-desolate, uncheered, hopeless, winter-old age, with its dreariness and its disappointments, and its querulous broken-heartedness; and there is no second spring for you-no resurrection-morning of blessedness to dawn on the darkness of your grave. God has only one method of salvation, the Cross of Christ. God can have only one; for the Cross of Christ means death to evil, life to good. There is no other way to salvation but that; for that in itself is, and alone is, salvation. Out of Christ, therefore, it is woe to the man who reaches forth to the things which are before. To such I say; My unhappy brethren, Omnipotence itself can not change the darkness of your destiny.

V.

TRIUMPH OVER HINDRANCES-ZACCHEUS.

“And Zaccheus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold."-Luke xix. 8.

THERE are persons. to whom a religious life seems smooth and easy. Gifted by God constitutionally with a freedom from those inclinations which in other men are tyrannous and irresistible, endued with those aspirations which other men seem to lack, it appears as if they were born saints.

There are others to whom it is all a trial-a whole world of passions keep up strife within. The name of the spirit which possesses them is Legion. It is a hard fight from the cradle to the grave--up-hill work-toil all the way; and at the last it seems as if they had only just kept their ground.

There are circumstances which seem as if intended as a very hot-bed for the culture of religious principle, in which the difficulty appears to be to escape being religious.

There are others in which religious life seems impossible. For the soul, tested by temptation, is like iron tried by weights. No iron bar is absolutely infrangible. Its strength is tested by the weight which it will bear without breaking. No soul is absolutely impeccable. It seems as if all we can dare to ask even of the holiest is how much temptation he can bear without giving way. There are societies amidst which some are forced to dwell daily, in which the very idea of Christian rest is negatived. There are occupations in which purity of heart can scarcely be conceived. There are temptations to which some are subjected in a long series, in which to have stood upright would have demanded not a man's but an angel's strength.

Here are two cases: one in which temperament and circumstances are favorable to religion; another in which both are adverse. If life were always the brighter side of these pictures, the need of Christian instruction and Christian casuistry—i. e., the direction for conduct under various supposable cases, would be superseded. The end of the institution of a Church would be gone; for the Church exists for the purposes of mutual sympathy and mutual support. But the fact is, life is for the most part a path of varied trial. How to lead the life divine, surrounded by temptations from within and from without-how to breathe freely the atmosphere of heaven, while the feet yet touch earthhow to lead the life of Christ, who shrunk from no scene of trying duty, and took the temptations of man's life as they came-or how even to lead the ordinary saintly life, winning experience from fall, and permanent strength out of momentary weakness, and victory out of defeat, this is the problem.

The possibility of such a life is guaranteed by the history of Zaccheus. Zaccheus was tempted much, and yet Zaccheus contrived to be a servant of Christ. If we wanted a motto to prefix to this story, we should append this: The successful pursuit of religion under difficulties.

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These, then, are the two branches of our thoughts to-day:

I. The hindrances to a religious life.

II. The Christian triumph over difficulties.

I. The hindrances of Zaccheus were twofold: partly cir cumstantial partly personal. Partly circumstantial, arising from his riches and his profession of a publican.

Now the publican's profession exposed him to temptations in these three ways. First of all, in the way of opportunity. A publican was a gatherer of the Roman public imposts. Not, however, as now, when all is fixed, and the Government pays the gatherer of the taxes. The Roman publican paid so much to the Government for the privilege of collecting them, and then indemnified himself, and appropriated what overplus he could, from the taxes which he gathered. There was, therefore, evidently a temptation to overcharge, and a temptation to oppress. To overcharge, because the only redress the payer of the taxes had was an appeal to law, in which his chance was small before a tribunal where the judge was a Roman, and the accuser an official of the Roman Government. A temptation to oppress, because the threat of law was nearly certain to extort a bribe. Besides this, most of us must have remarked that a certain harshness of manner is contracted by those who have the rule over the poor. They come in contact with human souls only in the way of business. They have to do with their ignorance, their stupidity, their attempts to deceive; and hence the tenderest-hearted men become impatient and apparently unfeeling. Hard men, knowing that redress is difficult, become harder still, and exercise their authority with the insolence of office; so that, when to the insolence of office and the likelihood of impunity there was superadded the pecuniary advantage annexed to a tyrannical extortion, any one may understand how great the publican's temptation was.

Another temptation was presented to live satisfied with a low morality. The standard of right and wrong is eternal in the heavens-unchangeably one and the same. But here on earth it is perpetually variable-it is one in one age or nation, another in another. Every profession has its conventional morality, current nowhere else. That which is permitted by the peculiar standard of truth acknowledged at the bar is falsehood among plain men; that which would be reckoned in the army purity and tenderness would be elsewhere licentiousness and cruelty. There is a parliamentary honor quite distinct from honor between man and man. Trade has its honesty, which rightly named is fraud. And in all these cases the temptation is to live content with the

standard of a man's own profession or society; and this is the real difference between the worldly man and the religious man. He is the worldling who lives below that standard, or no higher; he is the servant of God who lives above his age. But you will perceive that amongst publicans a very little would count much-that which would be laxity to a Jew and shame to a Pharisee, might be reckoned very strict morality among the Publicans.

Again, Zaccheus was tempted to that hardness in evil which comes from having no character to support. But the extent to which sin hardens depends partly on the estimate taken of it by society. The falsehood of Abraham, the guilt and violence of David, were very different in their effect on character in an age when truth and purity and gentleness were scarcely recognized, from what they would be now. Then Abraham and David had not so sinned against their consciences as a man would sin now in doing the same acts, because their consciences were less enlightened. A man might be a slave-trader in the Western hemisphere, and in other respects a humane, upright, honorable man. In the last century, the holy Newton of Olney trafficked in slaves after becoming religious. A man who had dealings in this way in this country could not remain upright and honorable, even if it were conceivable that he began as such; because he would either conceal from the world his share in the traffic, and so, doing it secretly, would become a hypocrite, or else he must cover his wickedness by effrontery, doing it in defiance of public shame, and so getting seared in conscience. Because in the one case, the sin remaining sin, yet countenanced by society, does not degrade the man nor injure his conscience even to the same extent to which it would ruin the other, whose conscience must become seared by defiance of public shame. It is scarcely possible to unite together the idea of an executioner of public justice and a humble, holy man. And yet assuredly, not from any thing that there is unlawful in the office; an executioner's trade is as lawful as a soldier's. A soldier is placed there by his country to slay his country's enemies, and a doomster is placed there to slay the transgressors of his country's laws. Wherein lies the difference which leaves the one a man of honor, and almost necessitates the other to be taken from the rank of reprobates, or else gradually to become such? Simply the difference of public opinion-public scorn. Once there was no shame in the office of the executioner, and the judge of Israel, with his own hands, hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Phineas executed summary and sanguinary vengeance, and

his name has been preserved in a hymn by his country's gratitude. The whole congregation became executioners in the case of blasphemy, and no abandonment was the result. But the voice of public opinion pronouncing an office or a man scandalous, either finds or else makes them what it has pronounced them. The executioner is or becomes an outcast, because reckoned such.

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More vile and more degraded than even the executioner's office with us was the office of publican among the Jews. penitent publican could not go to the house of God without the risk of hearing muttered near him the sanctimonious thanksgiving of Pharisaism: "God, I thank Thee that I am not as this publican." A publican, even though high in of fice, and rich besides, could not receive into his house a teacher of religion without being saluted by the murmurs of the crowd, as in this case: "He is gone to eat with a man that is a sinner." A sinner! The proof of that? The only proof was that he was a publican. There are men and women in this congregation who have committed sins that never have been published to the world; and therefore, though they be still untouched by the love of God, they have never sunk down to degradation; whereas the very same sins, branded with public shame, have sunk others not worse than them down to the lowest infamy. There is no principle in education and in life more sure than this-to stigmatize is to ruin; to take away character is to take away all. There is no power committed to man, capable of use and abuse, more certain and more awful than this: "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them."

This, then, was a temptation arising out of Zaccheus's circumstances to become quite hardened by having no character to support.

The personal hindrance to a religious life lay in the recollection of past guilt. Zaccheus had done wrong, and no four-fold restitution will undo that where only remorse exists.

There is a difference between remorse and penitence. Remorse is the consciousness of wrong-doing with no sense of love. Penitence is that same consciousness, with the feeling of tenderness and gratefulness added.

And pernicious as have been the consequences of self-righteousness, more destructive still have been the consequences of remorse. If self-righteousness has slain its thousands, remorse has slain its tens of thousands; for, indisputably, self righteousness secures a man from degradation. Have you never wondered at the sure walk of those persons who, to trust