and varied sources is daily making you more and more competent to the right apprehension of the Word of God. You have that Book in your hands in all its integrity; precept overlaying precept, example succeeding to example, and promise crowning promise, until at length in the treasury of GoD's Love and CHRIST'S Grace, there is not left a single jewel, which is not bestowed upon you. Far more than this-you have the glorious Realities, of which that Word testifies, abiding with you. To you is offered freely, without money and without price, the Blood of Atonement,to you is offered the Gift of the Indwelling Comforter, and all His convicting and converting influences. In virtue of your Baptism, you have present membership in a kingdom of Grace whose light is even now dawning imperceptibly towards the full noontide blaze of the kingdom of glory. And that the stern stimulant, terror, may abet by its influence the gentle drawings of Love, you are told that a mighty perdition of body and soul hangs over the head, not merely of the vicious, not merely of the profligate and profane, but of those too, whose heart and hope is engrossed with the things of time and sense, and who are not at present shaping their career by the chart of a foreseen Eternity.

My brethren, what would you have more? God compels no man to be holy; and what influence, short of compulsion, could be brought to bear upon your hearts and consciences, which does not, as from Heaven's own battery, play upon them now? Then, thus encouraged and thus stimulated,-with all this lavish measure of assistance, and all this abundant possibility of failure, are you coveting the praise of her, of whom it was said, She hath done what she could? Are you striving-agonizing-not simply running, not merely

X

wishing well, praying well, resolving well, making fitful and transient efforts after holiness, when remorse stings, and conscience accuses you-but so running that you may obtain,-running in the strenuous renunciation of all which the Divine Law forbids,— running in daily self-sacrifice and self-denial,-running in the prosecution of the highest standard and in imitation of the highest Example,-straining every nerve, plying every sinew, bending the entire energies of the whole moral frame to the one object of being conformed to the Image and Character of Christ? There is no possibility of working out our own salvation without a long and laborious stress of will; no possibility, except by violence, of taking the Kingdom of Heaven. 0 lay siege to it, not merely by vows and prayers and good wishes, but by efforts,-by the activity of the scheming head, and the vigour of the persevering hand; remember that, according to the testimony of Scripture, the righteous shall scarcely be saved; and resolve to be, not almost, but altogether a Christian.

So, and so only, shall you be counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.

SERMON XVII.

LEARNING A REQUISITE FOR THE MINISTRY OF THE PRESENT DAY.

Preached at an Ordination held by the Bishop of Oxford.

"Anto the Jews E became as a Jew, that E might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that E might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that E might gain them that are without law. To the weak became E as weak, that E might gain the weak: E am made all things to all men, that E might by all means save some.”—1 Cor. ix. 20-23.

In these words St. Paul describes the principle on which he carried out his ministry among all classes of men.

In his hands the Christian ministry was like the Gift of Tongues on the day of Pentecost. The effect of that gift was that " every man heard the Apostles speak in his own tongue wherein he was born." The Gift was one and the same gift; but it fell upon the ear of the stranger of Rome in his own familiar Latin, upon the ear of the Egyptian in Coptic. Not a bad emblem, by the way, of the manner in which the then opening Dispensation should adapt itself with a wonderful flexibility to the various forms of human character and the various phases of human society. In St. Paul's hands it did so. While never sacrificing for an instant

truth or principle, yet, so far as truth and principle admitted it, he wore the guise and spoke in the accents of the persons whom he addressed.

The doctrines indeed which he announced were as unchangeable as their Divine Author. There is, there can be, but "One Faith" for every class of the human family; and even where that Faith gave the deadliest offence, St. Paul set it forth unflinchingly. He might have escaped persecution in great measure, if not altogether, by an unworthy compromise with Judaizing Christians. Had he allowed for a moment any spurious amalgamation of the principles of the Law and the Gospel,-had he consented to rest the justification of the Christian partly on ritual, partly on works, and partly on faith, or slurred over the broad distinction between legal and evangelical righteousness, then would the offence of the Cross have ceased, nor would his body have been scarred with those marks of hardship, which he touchingly calls "the stigmata of the Lord Jesus."

Now considering how uncompromising was St. Paul's maintenance of God's Truth, what an infinite dislike of temporizing and dissimulation, what a strong love of plain-speaking and plain-dealing discovers itself in his character and conduct, it is surely very remarkable how he accommodates himself not only to the general habits of thought, but even to the innocent prejudices of those whom he desired to win to Christ. Recognizing circumcision as a national mark of distinction, while utterly denying its necessity to salvation, he circumcised Timothy, who had a right to it by his mother's side. Owing allegiance as a Jew to the Mosaic Ritual, so long as God suffered it to exist, he took legal vows, and was scrupulous in paying them. In arguing

against Judaizers he allegorized the story of Hagar and Sarai, dealing with the Old Testament precisely after the manner of the Jewish Rabbis. Among Gentiles, he illustrated the Christian career by images drawn from the periodical games of Greece, the footrace, and even the boxing-match-a circumstance the more remarkable, inasmuch as these games were, in fact, a heathen religious festival; he quoted truths which had been proclaimed by heathen poets; he founded his appeals on natural religion, at one time showing the beneficence of God from the rain and fruitful seasons which He sends to man, and at another reasoning with the licentious Felix on those duties and that retribution, of which his moral sense assured him. But perhaps the most detailed instance of his adapting himself to his hearers is the speech on Mars' hill at Athens. It appears from this speech that he has carefully made himself acquainted with the city of the Athenians, and through their city with their habit of mind. He addresses them as men who obviously lived in awe of superior beings, and he reveals to them the Being after whom they were groping in the blindness of their natural mind, and of Whom they ought to stand in awe;-the spirituality of His worship, the repentance to which He was then calling all nations, and the Judgment which He would one day institute by that Man whom He had ordained. How totally different in its topics, as well as in its form, is this address, from the sermon in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia! The announcement of the Resurrection is, indeed, common to both, and may be said to be the culminating point of both. But even this common verity is treated in a wholly different manner,-simply announced to the heathen, to the Jews elaborately proved from pro