forth to mere battle we are going forth to conquer. To gain mastery over self, and sin, and doubt, and fear, till the last coldness, coming across the brow, tell us that all is over, and our warfare accomplished, — that we are safe, the everlasting arms beneath us, that is our calling. Brethren beloved, do not be content with a slothful, dreamy, uncertain struggle. You are to conquer, and the banner under which we are to win is not Fear, but Love. "The strength of sin is the law;" the victory is by keeping before us God in Christ.

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Lastly, there is need of encouragement for those of us whose faith is not of the conquering, but the timid kind. There are some whose hearts will reply to all this, Surely victory is not always a Christian's portion. Is there no cold, dark watching in Christian life; no struggle when victory seems a mockery to speak of no times when life and light seem feeble, and Christ is to us but a name, and death a reality? "Perfect love casteth out fear;" but who has it? Victory is by faith; but, O God, who will tell us what this faith is that men speak of as a thing so easy, and how are we to get it? You tell us to pray for faith; but how shall we pray in earnest, unless we first have the very faith we pray for?

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My Christian brethren, it is just to this deepest cry of the human heart that it is impossible to return a full answer. All that is true. To feel faith is the grand difficulty of life. Faith is a deep impression of God and God's love, and personal trust in it. It is easy to say, "Believe, and thou shalt be saved," but well we know it is easier said than done. We cannot say how mer are to get faith. It is God's gift, almost in the same way that genius is. You cannot work for faith;

you must have it first, and then work from it. But, brethren beloved, we can say, Look up, though we know not how the mechanism of the will which directs the eye is to be put in motion; we can say, Look to God in Christ, though we know not how men are to obtain faith to do it. Let us be in earnest. Our polar star is the love of the Cross. Take the eye off that, and you are in darkness and bewilderment at once. Let us not mind what is past. Perhaps it is all failure, and useless struggle, and broken resolves: What then? Settle this first, brethren, Are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be weak and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of triumph now, for victory is pledged. "Thanks be to God, which" not shall give, but “giveth us the victory through ́our Lord Jesus Christ.??

25

XVIII.

[Preached June 20, 1852.]

MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESSO

Isanan, Avi 15. For thus saith the high and lofty, One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.

THE "origin" of this announcement seems to have been the state of contempt in which religion found itself in the days of Isaiah. One of the most profli gate monarchs that ever disgraced the page of sacred history sat upon the throne of Judah. His court was filled with men who recommended themselves chiefly by their licentiousness. The altar was forsaken. Sacrilegious hands had placed the abominations of heathenism in the Holy Place; and Piety, banished from the State, the Church, and the Royal court, was once more as she had been before, and will be again, a wanderer on the face of the earth. Now, however easy it may be to contemplate such a state of things at a distance, it never takes place in a man's own day and time without suggesting painful perplexities of a two-fold nature. In the first place, suspicions respecting God's character; and, in the second place, misgivings as to his own duty. For a faithless heart whispers, Is it worth while to suffer

for a sinking cause? Honor, preferment, grandeur,
follow in the train of unscrupulous conduct. To be
strict in goodness, is to be pointed at and shunned.
To be no better than one's neighbors is the only way
of being at peace.
It seems to have been to such a
state as this that Isaiah was commissioned to bring
light. He vindicated God's character by saying that
He is "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eter-
nity?" He encouraged those who were trodden down
to perseverance, by reminding them that real dignity
is something very different from present success. God
dwells with him "that is of a contrite and humble
spirit:"

I. That in which the greatness of God consists.
II. That in which man's greatness consists.

I. The first measurement, so to speak, which is given us of God's greatness, is in respect of Time. He inhabiteth Eternity. There are some subjects on which it would be good to dwell, if it were only for the sake of that enlargement of mind which is produced by their contemplation. And eternity is one of these, so that you cannot steadily fix the thoughts upon it without being sensible of a peculiar kind of eleva tion, at the same time that you are humbled by a personal feeling of utter insignificance. You have come in contact with something so immeasurable beyond the narrow range of our common speculations that you are exalted by the very conception of it. Now. the only way we have of forming any idea of eternity is by going, step by step, up to the largest measures of time we know of and so ascending, on and on, till we are lost in wonder. We cannot grasp eternity but

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we can learn something of it by perceiving, that, rise to what portion of time we will, eternity is vaster than the vastest. We take up, for instance, the history of our own country, and then, when we have spent months ing mastering the mere outline of those great events which, in the slow course of revolving centu ries; have made England what she is, her earlier ages seem so far removed from our own times that they ap pear to belong to a hoary and most remote antiquity. But, then, when you compare those times with even the existing works of man, and when you remember that, when England was yet young in civilization, the pyramids of Egypt were already gray with fifteen hun dred years, you have got another step, which impresses you with a doubled amount of vastness. Double that period, and you come to the far-distant moment when the present aspect of this world was called, by crea tion, out of the formless, void in which it was before.

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Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought beyond even this! It has commanded us to think of countless ages in which that formless void existed be fore it put on the aspect of its present creation. Millions of years before God called the light day, and the darkness night, there was, if science speaks true, crea tion after creation called into existence, and buried in its own ruins upon the surface of this earth. And, then, there was a time beyond even this there was a moment when this earth itself, with all its countless creations and innumerable ages, did not exist. Anl, again, in that far back distance it is more than conceivable it seems, by the analogy of God's dealings, next to certain that ten thousand worlds may have been called into existence, and lasted their unnum