think of the holiness, justice, wisdom, goodness, and grace of God, as necessary articles in some dry theological discussion, rather than as mighty facts in which the understanding should find its most active exercise, the heart the noblest objects of its love. May I ask, brethren, what subject of contemplation most interests and absorbs you? What theme most thoroughly engrosses your attention and gives you the most real enjoyment? Is your highest pleasure in the pursuit of art, or the study of science, or the promotion of political progress, or the advancement of some benevolent or philanthropic object? Is your main delight in devotion to worldly business, in amassing a fortune, in acquiring earthly possessions? or must you confess that your delight is in the pleasures of society, the excitements of music, the sensual gratification of your mere animal needs? Do you acknowledge that your delight is in yourself, in your favourite scheme of amusement, or selfeducation? or dare you say that you have learned to delight yourself in the nature and perfections of the Eternal God? Test yourself by the simple rule,-To what does your mind fly when you have finished your day's work? Is it to your hobby, to your selfindulgence, to some fresh scheme of enterprise, to the book, or the scene, or the pleasure which drives serious thought from the mind that you instinctively turn? Or, on the other hand, is it natural to you to contemplate the ideal of all beauty, the source of all power, the giver of all good, the foundation

of all righteousness, the complex of all causes,-the Eternal, the Holy, the Almighty, the Loving, the Blessed God? Is God Himself your most exceeding joy? Does your soul swell with the sublime conception of His nature and character? If so, the Lord Himself is preparing you to receive the desires of your heart.

Again, delight in the presence of God is involved in the command of my text. By that is meant the consciousness and realization of the Divine nearness and His personal relations with the soul. It is one thing to believe in God's Omnipresence; and another to say, "Surely God is in this place;" and yet another to say, "If Thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence." No man whose ideas of God's character and government are such as inspire distrust and fear, whose feelings towards God have been fashioned under the harsh systematizations of theologians, or the insufficient teachings of reason, or the terrible whispers of guilty conscience, can feel delight in conscious nearness to the Almighty.

If logic, tradition, philosophy, or guilty conscience have created the concept of the Almighty, it is only at rare intervals that the soul flies to the refuge of the imposing and overwhelming reality. If this be all that you possess, you have never yet learned to delight in God; and it is only in times of grievous calamity that you turn to Him as a last resource, in the dim hope that He may deliver you out of distresses from which you feel unable to extricate

yourself. You will not, you cannot delight in the presence of God until you have been reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ; and no man ever yet was reconciled to Infinite power and righteousness until he was able by some process to project into that righteousness eternal, divine mercy, and transfigure law into love. In other words, no man is reconciled to God until he believes that God is reconciled to him. It is through Christ that you are reconciled to God, because in Christ you see that God is reconciled to you. It is in Christ Jesus, the Son, the Lamb of God, that you have learned to love God with that love which casts out fear, to put your confidence in Him, to believe in His promises, to acquiesce in the way in which He will forgive and save you. When this is the case, you will at once find whole worlds of desire upon the point of satisfaction; "the desires of your heart" will hasten to their realization, for the first cry after God is the beginning of the answer, and the hungering after righteousness is itself blessed.

As soon as you make your delight in God's presence, and in all that ministers this great gift to you, your carnal lusts are subdued, your desires are purified; and the vices, the follies, or the trifles which once filled up the measure of your desires, and engrossed your thoughts, become distasteful and obnoxious to you. Your whims, your fancies, your secret wishes have all shifted their ground; the mean ignoble aim, the selfish lust, the self-seeking

plan can no longer find a place in the soul that delights in God's presence; for this is the beginning of heaven upon earth, and the soul that can cry out in the plenitude of its satisfaction,-" O God! I have Thee in the plenitude of Thy grace; I have Thee in the majesty of Thy grace; I have Thee in Christ; I have Thee in the teaching of Thy Spirit”cannot combine with such high sources of enjoyment petitions for things that are merely of the earth earthy. These can no longer be called the desires of the heart; they may come as blessings from the hand of a loving Father, and be received with joy and gratitude, but they make no matter of prayer. The sigh of the spirit is ever after spiritual blessings; "Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee" is its daily cry, and the realization of this desire is sufficient compensation for sorrow and suffering: it can make up for the absence of personal comfort, for the presence of pain, for the loss of friends, for the withdrawal of all other sources of consolation. It eats out the disposition to repine, it destroys even the strong desire for deliverance from trouble, and teaches the full meaning, the exhaustive nature of the prayer, "Thy will be done."

Again, Delight in the Lord involves delight in the kingdom of God. We give thanks to our Father that many of those manifestations of His character and presence which inspire delight in the heart of His children, exercise a double influence; they give unspeakable delight in themselves, and

they prepare the way for heavenly benedictions; they eat out the desires that are evil, and they satisfy those that are divine.

Our desires generally grow out of the revelation to us of ends or objects which we feel will increase our present happiness, or remove our pain; and they take their character from that which, in a greater or less degree, gives us pleasure. Desire is but the flower of the plant in which we delight; it is in the flower that the seed is fashioned, nursed, and matured. If we delight in the kingdom of God, then our strongest desires cluster around the progress of that kingdom. Thus they become allied to the purposes of God; they are occupied with the highest interests of mankind; they rise out of self, and take the noblest substitute for self; they assume, as it were, the character of prophecies, and predict in the confidence of faith the fulfilment of God's great promises. The desires of those who delight in God's kingdom are the heralds of great things. These are the yearnings which first predict, and then bring the blessing. But let us not indulge mistaken notions on this subject: God's kingdom is not the little narrow circle in which we happen to move; nor the branch of the Church which reveals itself through our ordinances, but the great dominion of God in Christ-the reign of God in the earth-the dominion of the glorified Son of God. If we take delight in that, if we are ever longing to see it advance and flourish, to be ourselves its willing and