salvation, the Bible, and the Church ;-but I do say that, just as he has found out the law of God, the love of Christ, and the power and spirit of holiness, he must allow these things to dictate, to repress, to flavour, to purify, or govern all his speech. You cannot truly praise God in the morning and utter threats and frivolities at night; you cannot truly trust your soul to God's faithfulness on the Sunday, and be unfaithful to your neighbour on the Monday; you must not pray for mercy in the Sanctuary, and shew no mercy to your client, your colleague, or your enemy; you must not join in the songs of Zion, and then find zest in the frivolities, the impurities, the unkindnesses, the scandals, the misrepresentations of daily life. My dear brethren, every-day life means every day's talk.

(2) WISH is an equally extended department of every-day life. It is in our nature to be conscious of desires after a great many things, and these desires are not in themselves sinful; they are even. necessary to the maintenance of life, to the onward progress of mankind, to the subduing and replenishing of the earth which God has lent to us, and in which He has given us a life-interest. These desires of all kinds are the spring of nearly all that we do in this life. Deprive a man of his wishes, let "desire fail," and he soon "goes to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets." Our human existence is one ceaseless, insatiable longing. We are constantly trying to make our own, and in some sense

to gather into ourselves, that which is beyond us. But one man wishes for one set of enjoyments and common mercies, and another man for another. One man slaves for his daily bread alone, and another has all this toil sweetened by the love of home, of wife and child. One man desires the gratification of perverted tastes; another man yearns for the satisfaction of the most exalted aspirations. Our every-day life is made up of wishes-some of them pure, and some degraded. At times they are wise, and often they are vain and foolish. To-day we are craving a new power, to-morrow we are labouring to wipe out an old stain; at one time we are aspiring after heavenly things, at another we are plunging headlong into abysses of folly and shame. In the realm of human desire is included all the empire of motive; all the reasons that we have for doing everything; all the premeditations of sin; all the lusts of the flesh and of the mind; all our temper and spirit; all our disappointments and vexations; the disposition with which we pursue our work; the prayers we offer for heavenly succour; yes, all the God-implanted yearnings by which He prepares us for spiritual blessing. The life of a truly religious man does not involve the extinction of all his human desires, but it does mean the surpassing activity of heavenly desires; the predominance of wishes that are suggested by his new and higher life.

Every-day life means every day's wish. Not the wish which can be felt on one Sunday, and then

forgotten until the next, or which can be felt when we are on our knees, and never felt again till custom once more brings us there; not the muttered interjection, which in a moment of fear or agony will lead us, from our heart, to wish that we were better men; but all the daily, abiding, habitual wishes of our souls. Let us bring them up now, and see what is the revelation they will give us of ourselves ;perhaps we shall find a legion of devils, which must be cast out; a storm of passions, which must be hushed; a brood of revenges, vexations, bad resolves, unbrotherly triumphs, impure hankerings, which must be trampled out of us. Perhaps they are humble, virtuous, charitable, reasonable, modest, chaste, holy desires, fit for a brother or sister of Jesus. A moment's thought will prove that these desires of ours, these genuine intentions, these self-born, or heaven-inspired wishes, are our very SELF; and if we are to be religious men, religion must have sway over these.

(3) WORK is another main element in life. The business of life, the daily toil and drudgery of a man, these help to constitute his every-day life. Not simply what he talks of, or wishes for, but what he actually does in this world. As I have already said, the spirit in which a common or utterly secular thing is done, may redeem it from being mean or contemptible. I once knew an old servant of God, who had been working hard all his days, amid much poverty and sickness. I met him one day when he had nearly reached his eightieth year; he was gathering sticks

on the high road. I accosted him in tones of commiseration; but there was a smile on his withered face as he began to talk of his mercies. I shall never forget his tone of voice, nor the light in his eye, as he said, “I have been thinking that, if it were not for this naughty unbelief, we might feel that God's love had made even this world into a paradise." And now I seldom see a man at work on the highway, or overborne, as it would seem to me, by the pressure of life's heavy burden, without remembering that noble utterance; and I know that it is possible for a human being to do the hardest, humblest, even the most distasteful human work, and yet to move along the highways of this dusty, defiled, present evil world, transforming it into a paradise. But there is a great deal of work done, that no Christian, that no religious man, can by any possibility do, which no amount of Christian spirit can by any possibility sanctify. There are ways of doing business, that are the devil's own ways of ruining the souls of men. There are cheatery and systematic dishonesty that nothing can justify; which, as long as they are persisted in, no power can pardon. There is work done in this Christian England for which, so long as it is persevered in, it is mockery to speak of the blood of Christ. There is NO PARDON possible, but a certain, fearful looking for of fiery indignation.

There is work done at which human nature shudders; there is work done, which though not actually criminal, none but the hardest hearts can do,-none

but the coldest souls, the most unbrotherly hands can accomplish. There is a stern justice, and right even, which have no bowels in them. For instance, there is a distress-warrant now on the way to some poor widow. It will quite fill up the measure of her sorrows. She has had a hard week's work, doing her very best; her little fatherless child has been sick of the fever; she has toiled like a slave in some little shop ever since her husband's death, but the heavy rain entered the broken window and spoilt her goods; and trade has been bad, and the rent is due. She does not know it, but all her hopes are hanging on the will of a collector employed by some landlord who rejoices in whole streets of such property as her poor abode. The collector talks about doing his duty; and that work of breaking the widow's heart will be done by him as calmly as if he were treading on a broken egg-shell. Shall not He that fashioned that heart consider it?

Yes, that little word WORK contains whole worlds of meaning. There is the work of the statesman and the artist, of the preacher and the poet, the work of the imagination and the reason, and all the incessant toil that ambition and competition dictate. We shall not exhaust it by a brief enumeration. Every-day life includes all the things that are actually done by us, either as duty or necessity, under the inspiration of the lowest as well as the highest motives. It must be possible to bring all this under the empire of religion, to supply a set of motives that can