tellectual perfection-but moral perfection- Perfect Purity! Perfect Love! Perfect humility! Perfect submission ! Perfect Mercy! "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." This shows what the Christian should be, and holds up before his eyes a privilege for which God will hold him responsible! Whosoever preaches a less salvation than this commits the cardinal error of lowering the standard of Christ's religion, and becomes guilty of offering a defective salvation, which fails in fitting the sinner for heaven. Such a preacher places his own soul, and the souls that hear him, in a perilous condition. The Son of God has fixed the mark. Upon the elevated spot where he preached he reared it up; and pointing his hearers to God as their model, he said, "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

There is great reason for fearing that many of the professing Christians of our age are more concerned about the question, "How little religion can I get to heaven with? than how holy ought I to be ?—what amount of purity and obedience does God require of me?—how can I most improve the world, and glorify my heavenly Father? That many such persons exist in society is too true; and such a state of things sets our charity, respecting their hatred of sin, and love of holiness, at utter defiance. What does such an enquiry imply, but that Christians of this sort are Christless ones? They feel no true regard for God's honour-God's truth-God's claims upon them: but are influenced by sheer selfishness. The Saviour may be rejected, duty neglected, holiness reprobated, God dishonoured, sin indulged, and they feel untroubled. They care not if they can but get through heaven's gates. Such persons, in such a state of mind, cannot enter the heavenly Jerusalem. "Nothing that defileth shall in anywise enter

that eternal house; nor any that are defiled, unless first washed from all their uncleanness in the blood of the Lamb. The qualification is, bearing Christ's image, and following his example.

The preachers of the present day are blameable for setting the standard of Gospel religion too low-far beneath the Saviour's sermon on the mount. For this reason thousands of Christ's sheep are cold, sickly, and weak among us. The children of God are kept in a state of spiritual infancy, or moral babyhood. They are hindered exceedingly in their growth by being kept too long sucking at the breasts of first principles, and being rocked to sleep in the cradle of indifference to the great requirements of the Gospel. They must be taken from the paps, kept out of the cradle, fed with the strong meat of higher knowledge and full salvation; must have the way of perfect holiness pointed out to them, and be set on their feet after Perfection, with the arousing words, "Without holiness no man

shall see the Lord."

To remain babes is truly degrading. Rather let us aspire after the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Entire sanctification brings with it a growth of greater rapidity. Let the Christian haste away to Christ as his sanctification, and embrace him as his complete Saviour from all sin, and restorer to all God's moral image, and he will soon be sensible of a mighty difference. This is the way to pass from spiritual infancy to fathers and mothers in Israel. Such "shall grow as the lily, and cast forth their roots as Lebanon. Their branches shall spread, and their beauty shall be as the olive tree, and their smell as Lebanon."

A full-grown flourishing Christian, on account of his spiritual beauty, unction, and moral fruitfulness, is a most attractive object. He is free from sin, both in heart and life. He is

Reader, you may be

full of love, both in heart and life. such an one. One of strong faith in all the promises, and burning zeal for God's honour, and the sinner's salvation. A man whose Christianity constitutes him cheerful and submissive, and whose religion recommends itself to others. In short, a man who loves God supremely, and his fellowcreature equal to himself. This is what the author of our holy religion wants to see in us. This is the unalterable standard which he himself hath set up and to require anything less, however small, would evince an imperfection in the Gospel, and be a just cause of complaint against the religion of Jesus.

Perfection in purity and love is the most reasonable thing in the universe. Love is practical divinity—the more perfect, the more Divine. Love is the nature of God. Love is the fulness of God. To be filled with love to the dispossession of every evil, and the implantation of every good, is in fact to be filled with all the fulness of God! This is the design of the Gospel, the will of God, and the cause of St. Paul's prayer for the Ephesians, iii. 14—21.

An eloquent friend of mine, one day in the pulpit, when defining the nature of Christian perfection, said, "Some persons, for want of knowing better, startle at the mention of the thing, as though it were terrible to behold. In their ignorance of the simplicity of the blessing, they immediately conjure up a giant before their imagination, and then start away affrighted from before the monster of their own creating." The nature of the blessing constitutes it the most lovely, amiable, and desirable thing that can be: and whoever objects to being made perfect, objects through erroneous information on the subject, or from ignorance on the subject altogether.

"Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God," is the plain command of heaven. The simple truth is this-If I

love God with all my heart, I am then perfect. If you love God with all your heart, you too are perfect. And if another loves God with all his heart, then he also is perfect. Perfect in love to God. My moral powers may be stronger or weaker than yours, or yours may very materially differ from another person's. But your love is not to be measured by my powers, nor my duty to God by your talents, nor another's by yours. The moral and intellectual pow

ers of mankind very greatly vary, consequently their love to God, and their works for God, must necessarily vary also. Every man must be emptied of sin, and filled with love, whether he have a great heart, or a little heart: and that is what we mean by Christian perfection.

God is pure-we must be pure. God is full of love— we must be full of love. Not capable of loving as much as God, nor loving as much as another man: but loving with all our heart. God loves with all his heart. Angels love with all their hearts. You must love with all your heart. Every man and woman must do the same, whatever their capacity may be; and then all are perfect. To love as greatly as God is absolutely impossible; and for all men to love the same in degree as one another, is contrary to the natural variation of our mental and moral constitutions. God requires you to love him with all your heart. This is to be your degree of perfection. And as the powers of your soul expand, your love to God must keep pace with them. The degrees of perfection are numerous, and various indeed, because mankind are so. must get to moral perfection; and then increase in it. thing is very clear, and you cannot easily mistake the

matter.

You

The

CHAPTER II.

PERFECTION.

Ir is laid down as an axiom in mathematics, that "the whole is equal to all its parts." I take a small globe and set it before me, and behold it all in one undivided body I then divide it into nine parts, but find that this division into so many pieces makes no addition to its substance. I then take eight of them, and put them together from whence I at first took them, but find it impossible to make the globe perfect as before, without the ninth, however small. I then take the other, and find that all those nine parts make no more of it than at first. Now apply this to religion. Perfect Love is perfect religion. This is the globe. This is the embodiment of the nine fruits of the Spirit described by St. Paul, in the fifth chapter of Galations. Perfect love is the circle of Christianity. It is the concentration of Christian graces, or an amassment of those heaven-born virtues against which there is no law! Perfect love implies perfect joy, perfect peace, perfect long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, or fidelity, meekness, temperance. They are all in it. They are all parts of it. "The whole is equal to its parts." And no less than all its parts can make up the whole, which is LOVE. "Love is the fulfilling of the law." God requires no more: no less.

He can demand