ritual part of him, cannot be restored without his will and by the material part of him. At the Fall, the hand of faith lost its hold upon God, and man began to trust in himself; what is it but the outstretching again of that hand of faith that constitutes his return to God? What but that act of the mind, which opens every channel through which his grace is appointed to flow? Our Church has taken care to discountenance the Romish view, which would degrade a sacrament into a charm or talisman, by clear statements; "the mean whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper is faith. "The wicked and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth.... the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, yet in nowise are they partakers of Christ; but rather to their condemnation do eat and drink the sign or sacrament of so great a thing" (114).

...

If Jesus has

Only one topic remains. done such great things for us, his life is the principal scene of the world's history, and all thoughts and feelings ought to be turned towards it, as all plants follow the light. What place, then, should the doctrine of the Atonement hold in preaching? On the one hand, many pious minds are afraid that the

constant iteration of the fact that Christ died to save the world may defeat its own aim, by producing weariness and inattention, or may lull the impenitent into the security of a false peace. On the other hand, where the cross of Christ is kept back, a dull and flat morality takes the place of the Gospel, or less vital questions, about the effect of sacraments, or the position of ministers, usurp an undue prominence. But if the whole life and person of the Redeemer are set forth, together with their necessary connexion with our life and actions, there is little danger either of tedious iteration or of self-deceit. To preach Christ and him crucified, to proclaim that he is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, to show how this one great truth ramifies through all the paths of knowledge and duty, is the business of every Christian teacher; and if the line of the duty is clearly discernible, the consequences belong to God. There has ever been in the doctrine of Redemption an efficacy that has surprised even those who have administered it. Go forth, it might be said to one who had undertaken to win souls for Christ, and preach the whole truth without distrust. You may not see how the news that Jesus lived and suffered

is to enter into and vehemently move the souls you try to instruct; but for well-nigh two thousand years has the cross of Christ been lifted up, and has been drawing all men unto it. In every congregation, though the attrition of custom seems to have rounded all men into the same outward manner, almost like the twinned pebbles in the brook, there are many secret influences at work, and for each does the news of Christ provide some food or medicine. There is the yearning of affection, and the heartache of baffled hope, the irritation of sickness, the decay of manly strength, the fear of the end. Beware of ministering to these various ailments with an empiric's arbitrary hand; dispense fairly what the great Physician of souls has intrusted to you. Ears long closed will be opened when you expect not; trials befall men daily, under which the hardest discovers that he has a heart of flesh. And not far before us lies a point at which we must either rest on heavenly hopes or remain without hope. Think what it must be to die. Will a theory of the visible Church, of an Apostolic ministry, of the precise effects of sacraments, provide a man sufficiently against that great transition? Death is not in most cases-not always even with the

gooda glad and speedy progress to a higher state of life, cheered by the consciousness of a good fight fought, with the lights of another world breaking into this, and glimpses of the angels round about the throne. No; it is often a state in which the mind is weak and prostrate, and full of fear and awe; and the embracing hands of affection must be unclasped, not without suffering; and all pursuits that made the mind's activity must be abandoned; and in the disturbed perspective of memory old sins and new shall struggle for the foremost rank; and the tide of life must slowly recede from limbs and senses, and the curtain of a strange gloom fall down. "He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me"." Into your hands, as his minister, has Christ intrusted the vials of his consolation. Go and pour them out for each. Tell them what shall make life at present real and true; assure them of something that shall stand them in good stead when the pageant is over and the lights go out. Bid them

m Psalm xxiii. 3, 4.

know that their Redeemer liveth; tell them that one who is the Resurrection and the Life compasses them about already with the cords of his sympathy, and will never forsake them. And you will wonder at the tenacious grasp with which those will embrace the cross who have no other hope; you will see, that so long as we teach all things that he has commanded, he is with us always, even unto the end of the world.