universities, virtue is defined as that which is done at the command of God, for the sake of an eternal reward. So, then, religion is nothing more thần là calculation of infinite and finite quantities; vice is nothing more than a grand imprudence; and heaven is nothing more than selfishness rewarded with eternal well-being!

Yet this, you will observe, is a necessary step in the development of faith. Faith is the conviction that God is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him; and there is a moment in human progress when the anticipated rewards and punishments must be of a Mahometan character-the happiness of the senses. It was thus that the Jews were disciplined; out of a coarse, rude, infantine state, they were educated, by rewards and punishments, to abstain from present sinful gratification. At first, the promise of the life which now is; afterwards, the promise of that which is to come. But, even then, the rewards and punishments of a future state were spoken of, by inspiration itself, as of an arbitrary character; and some of the best of the Israelites, in looking to the recompense of reward, seemed to have anticipated, coarsely, recompense in exchange for duties performed.

The last step is that which alone deserves to be called Christian Faith. "Who is he that overcometh, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ?" The difference between the faith of the Christian and that of the man of the world, or the mere ordinary religionist, is not a difference in mental operation, but in the object of the faith; to believe that Jesus is the Christ is the peculiarity of Christian faith.

The anticipated heaven of the Christian differs from

the anticipated heaven of any other man, not in the distinctness with which its imagery is perceived, but in the kind of objects which are hoped for. The apostle has told us the character of heaven. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him," which glorious words are sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as if the apostle merely meant rhetorically to exalt the conception of the heavenly world, as of something beyond all power to imagine or to paint. The apostle meant something infinitely deeper; the heaven of God is not only that which "eye hath not seen," but that which eye can never see; its glories are not of that kind at all which can ever stream in forms of beauty on the eye, or pour in melody upon the enraptured ear,not such joys as genius, in its most gifted hour (here called "the heart of man"), can invent or imag ine; it is something which these sensuous organs of ours never can appreciate, bliss of another kind altogether, revealed to the spirit of man by the Spirit of God, joys such as spirit alone can receive. Do you ask what these are? "The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." That is heaven, and therefore the apostle tells us that he alone who "believeth that Jesus is the Christ," and only he, feels that... What is it to believe that Jesus is the Christ? That He is the Anointed One, that His life is the anointed life, the only blessed life, the blessed life divine for thirty years? Yes, but if so, the blessed life still, continued throughout all eternity; unless you believe that, you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ.

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What is the blesse Iness that you expect?to have the joys of earth, with the addition of the element of eternity? Men think that heaven is to be a compen sation for earthly loss. The saints are earthly-wretched here, the children of this world are earthly-happy; but that, they think, shall be all reversed, Lazarus, be yond the grave, shall have the purple, and the fine linen, and the splendor, and the houses, and the lands, which Dives had on earth; the one had them for time, the other shall have them for eternity. That is the heaven that men expect, this earth sacrificed now, in order that it may be re-granted forever.

Nor will this expectation be reversed, except by a reversal of the nature. None can anticipate such a heaven as God has revealed, except they that are born of the Spirit; therefore, to believe that Jesus is the Christ, a man must be born of God. You will observe that no other victory overcomes the world; for this is what St. John means by saying, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ?" For then it comes to pass that a man begins to feel that to do wrong is hell; and that to love God, to be like God, to have the mind of Christ, is the only heaven. Until this victory is gained, the world retains its stronghold in the heart.

Do you think that the temperate man has overcome the world, who, instead of the short-lived rapture of intoxication, chooses regular employment, health, and prosperity? Is it not the world, in another form, which has his homage? Or, do you suppose that the so-called religious man is really the world's con queror, by being content to give up seventy years of enjoyment in order to win innumerable ages of the

very same species of enjoyment? Has he not only made earth a hell, in order that earthly things may be his heaven forever?

Thus the victory of faith proceeds from stage to stage the first victory is when the present is conquered by the future; the last, when the Visible and Sensual is despised in comparison of the Invisible and Eternal. Then earth has lost its power forever; for if all that it has to give be lost eternally, the gain of faith is still infinite.

III.

[Preached Whitsunday, May 19, 1850.]

THE DISPENSATION OF THE SPIRIT.

1 CORINTHIANS xii. 4. -"Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit."

ACCORDING to a view which contains in it a profound truth, the ages of the world are divisible into three dispensations, presided over by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

In the dispensation of the Father, God was known as a Creator; creation manifested His eternal power and Godhead, and the religion of mankind was the religion of Nature.

In the dispensation of the Son, God manifested Himself to humanity through man; the Eternal Word spoke, through the inspired and gifted of the human race, to those that were uninspired and ungifted. This was the dispensation of the prophets; its climax was the advent of the Redeemer; it was completed when perfect Humanity manifested God to man. The characteristic of this dispensation was, that God revealed Himself by an authoritative Voice, speaking from without, and the highest manifestation of God whereof man was capable was a Divine Humanity. The age in which we at present live is the dispensa (77)

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