ately dimmed by dark shadows when they try to take this royal survey of their great possession.

But consider not only the great and unceasing task which, so long as we wander in this body of sin and death, lies for us in the words, "Ye are Christ's," but also their comforting aspect. If the Lord will have you fully and completely, He must have you with all your misery, with all your sin, with all your outward and inward needs ard cares. These were not wanting among the Corinthians also, and yet Paul writes of them, "Ye are Christ's," because they had surrendered themselves with all their sins to the Master. Oh, beloved soul, learn from this, then, this great comfort: He will have thee thus, just as thou art, fully and just now, even though He knows thy vilenesses better than thou knowest them thyself. Do not wait to see if thou canst become better and make a fairer appearance. Thou canst never be so without Him, and every hour that thou keepest back from Him is something stolen from His dearly-acquired possession, is a new guilt. Go to Him, and say: Lord, I have heard that Thou wilt have me, yea, that for my sake Thou hast taken upon Thyself pain and sorrow inconceivably great-here Thou hast me for Thyself, with all my wickedness, all my guilt and all my weakness!

Oh, beloved soul, as sure as God is God and His Word the Truth, so surely to-day does He offer to thee again a Gospel which by Christ's command is to be preached to every lost crea. ture. He will accept of thee and give Himself to thee as thine And having Him you have all things; you are one of the King's children and an heir to the unfading crown, and it is your privilege, the more fully you are His, to give up to Him all that oppresses and grieves you.

own.

But thou that hast Him not, look at the other side of the truth, of which the apostle reminds us to-day. While all is yours only if and in so far as you are Christ's, you have nothing, nothing at all, if you do not belong to Him. Am I saying perhaps too much? Oh no! not yet enough. Thou hast worse than nothing, deep guilt!

If all things, including you, have been delivered to Christ of His Father, then you, with all you are and have, live on His goods and possessions, over which you are placed here only as steward, not as owner. If you remain your own, and use that which is entrusted to you as your own, instead of for your Master's purposes, then you are wasting His goods as a wicked steward, and heaping guilt upon guilt. Every minute which you appropriate as your own, instead of using it in Him and for Him, is a theft; every beating of the heart which does not belong to Him is a crime, and your whole self-glory a long register of guilt which accuses you.

Oh! how miserably poor is the Christless world, which seeks

to belong not to Him, but to itself! If it will look over its possessions, it must draw back its gaze ever farther. To it belongs not the future, for this brings to it only death and judgment, and it has no hope of the eternal life; not the present, for this not only melts away under its hands, but is taken possession of by another, who leads it to quite other ends than the world dreams of; not death, for this has the world, and not the world it, and lets it only once pass from the first to the second and eternal death; not life, for it knows not at all what is called life; because it has not Him who is Life itself, it knows neither life's true task nor its genuine joy, and its whole lifework can show nothing which is permanent and which would make its poor life really worth the living; not Paul, not Apollos, not Cephas, not one God-sent teacher of the truth, because their testimony does not exist for the world which despises and rejects it, and their word of life becomes unto it only a savor of death unto death. Nay, not even the world. Not even this last thing still remaining to it does the world have and hold; for, because it of right belongs to another whose service it withdraws to itself, He punishes it by letting it always destroy itself more and more of itself, and it loses itself ever deeper till the last faint ray of life and pleasure, of honor and of joy, of time and strength, is forever extinguished beyond recall.

Therefore, dear brethren,--either with Him and having all things, or without Him and having nothing, nay, less than nothing, immeasurable guilt against Him who has all things-that is the choice! Oh! since it is often hard to tear yourselves away from the world, which tires itself in the pursuit after an imaginary possession, learn as Christians untiringly to regard this world in the light of these kingly words, "All is yours;" and let the royal sentiment, the unending consciousness of elevation, that arises out of it, chase away all petty cares and debased desires. But along with that, attend each day to the solemn self-examination: Am I also Christ's? He alone who has received, with the Spirit, the seal of sonship to God, and is ever diligent in deep humility and earnest watchfulness not to grieve this Holy Spirit, he is and remains an heir to the kingdom, and can in truth follow with his gaze the apostle's survey of his immeasurable possession. He receives all things-here in faith, love and hope, there in seeing and enjoying-from Him who says, "And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me" (Luke xxii : 29).

ately dimmed by dark shadows when they try to take this royal survey of their great possession.

But consider not only the great and unceasing task which, so long as we wander in this body of sin and death, lies for us in the words, "Ye are Christ's," but also their comforting aspect. If the Lord will have you fully and completely, He must have you with all your misery, with all your sin, with all your outward and inward needs ard cares. These were not wanting among the Corinthians also, and yet Paul writes of them, "Ye are Christ's," because they had surrendered themselves with all their sins to the Master. Oh, beloved soul, learn from this, then, this great comfort: He will have thee thus, just as thou art, fully and just now, even though He knows thy vilenesses better than thou knowest them thyself. Do not wait to see if thou canst become better and make a fairer appearance. Thou canst never be so without Him, and every hour that thou keepest back from Him is something stolen from His dearly-acquired possession, is a new guilt. Go to Him, and say: Lord, I have heard that Thou wilt have me, yea, that for my sake Thou hast taken upon Thyself pain and sorrow inconceivably great-here Thou hast me for Thyself, with all my wickedness, all my guilt and all my weakness!

Oh, beloved soul, as sure as God is God and His Word the Truth, so surely to-day does He offer to thee again a Gospel which by Christ's command is to be preached to every lost creature. He will accept of thee and give Himself to thee as thine own. And having Him you have all things; you are one of the King's children and an heir to the unfading crown, and it is your privilege, the more fully you are His, to give up to Him all that oppresses and grieves you.

But thou that hast Him not, look at the other side of the truth, of which the apostle reminds us to-day. While all is yours only if and in so far as you are Christ's, you have nothing, nothing at all, if you do not belong to Him. Am I saying perhaps too much? Oh no! not yet enough. Thou hast worse than nothing, deep guilt!

If all things, including you, have been delivered to Christ of His Father, then you, with all you are and have, live on His goods and possessions, over which you are placed here only as steward, not as owner. If you remain your own, and use that which is entrusted to you as your own, instead of for your Master's purposes, then you are wasting His goods as a wicked steward, and heaping guilt upon guilt. Every minute which you appropriate as your own, instead of using it in Him and for Him, is a theft; every beating of the heart which does not belong to Him is a crime, and your whole self-glory a long register of guilt which accuses you.

Oh! how miserably poor is the Christless world, which seeks

to belong not to Him, but to itself! If it will look over its possessions, it must draw back its gaze ever farther. To it belongs not the future, for this brings to it only death and judgment, and it has no hope of the eternal life; not the present, for this not only melts away under its hands, but is taken possession of by another, who leads it to quite other ends than the world dreams of; not death, for this has the world, and not the world it, and lets it only once pass from the first to the second and eternal death; not life, for it knows not at all what is called life; because it has not Him who is Life itself, it knows neither life's true task nor its genuine joy, and its whole lifework can show nothing which is permanent and which would make its poor life really worth the living; not Paul, not Apollos, not Cephas, not one God-sent teacher of the truth, because their testimony does not exist for the world which despises and rejects it, and their word of life becomes unto it only a savor of death unto death. Nay, not even the world. Not even this last thing still remaining to it does the world have and hold; for, because it of right belongs to another whose service it withdraws to itself, He punishes it by letting it always destroy itself more and more of itself, and it loses itself ever deeper till the last faint ray of life and pleasure, of honor and of joy, of time and strength, is forever extinguished beyond recall.

Therefore, dear brethren,--either with Him and having all things, or without Him and having nothing, nay, less than nothing, immeasurable guilt against Him who has all things—that is the choice! Oh! since it is often hard to tear yourselves away from the world, which tires itself in the pursuit after an imaginary possession, learn as Christians untiringly to regard this world in the light of these kingly words, "All is yours;" and let the royal sentiment, the unending consciousness of elevation, that arises out of it, chase away all petty cares and debased desires. But along with that, attend each day to the solemn self-examination: Am I also Christ's? He alone who has received, with the Spirit, the seal of sonship to God, and is ever diligent in deep humility and earnest watchfulness not to grieve this Holy Spirit, he is and remains an heir to the kingdom, and can in truth follow with his gaze the apostle's survey of his immeasurable possession. He receives all things-here in faith, love and hope, there in seeing and enjoying-from Him who says, "And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me" (Luke xxii : 29).

The Creative Energy in Nature and in Grace.

A SERMON

By Pharcellus Church, D.D., TARRYTOWN, N. Y.

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.-Psalms xxxiii : 6.

These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.-Rev. iii: 14.

Who hath created all things by Jesus Christ.-Eph. iii: 9.

I have created him (Jacob), I have formed him; yea, I have made him .—Isaiah xliii : 7. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.—Eph. ii: 10.

Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered; nor come into mind.-Isaiah lxv: 17.

WE have in these passages the leading features of God's work in creation as revealed in Scripture; and we trust that we shall make it clear that it is as remote as heaven from earth from anything that science is able to reach by its methods. In doing this we shall outline our text, and then speak of the creative energy in itself, in its working, in its unity, and in its final

cause or consummation.

I. WE ARE TO OUTLINE Our Text.

1. The passages of the text seem to vibrate between a literal and spiritual meaning. The dress of the thought is literal, but the body or substance is clearly spiritual. Our first impression of the heavens and their host is, that they relate to the material expanse above us with its shining worlds; but when it is said in the same connection (Psalms xxxiii: 13) that "the Lord looked down from heaven," we know that the spiritual universe must be in view. The Amen as God's faithful and true witness, and Jacob or Israel as a representative people, are also necessarily spiritual. So the creation of Christian believers is their birth of the Spirit to a new and holy life, and the new heavens and earth cannot refer to the solid frame-work of nature, but only to a divine and heavenly order of things. Hence, whatever is literal in these passages is, like written or spoken language, a mere organ of expression to what is of thought, to what is of mind, to what is of the spiritual world.

2. As the creation is spiritual, so is the energy that produced it. This energy is spoken of as the Word or Breath of God, and as Jesus Christ. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their host by His breath, or, which is the same thing, God created all things by Jesus Christ. The terms are different, but the meaning the same. As creation is a thing of time and space, so must be the energy producing it. How can