fore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren." He leaves the whole question of arbitration versus law, and strikes at the root of the matter. "Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?" Why so? Because to bear wrong, to endure that is Christianity. Christ expressed this in proverbial form : "If a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other." "If any man sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." And now consider: Is there, can there be any principle but this which shall at last heal the quarrels of the world? For while one party holds out as a matter of principle, the other appeals to law, and both are well assured of their own rights, what then must be the end? "If ye bite and devour one another," says St. Paul, "take heed that ye be not devoured one of another." Whereas, if we were all christianized, if we were all ready to bear and endure injuries, law would be needless there would be no cry of "my rights, my rights," you will say, perhaps - But if we bear, we shall be wronged. You forget, I say if all felt thus, if the spirit of all were endurance, there would be no

wrong.

And so, at last, Christianity is finality. The world has no remedy for its miseries but the cure of its selfishness. The Cross of Christ, the spirit of that Sacrifice can alone be the regeneration of the world. The coming Revelation can only be a development of the last, as Christianity was of Judaism. There can be no new Revelation. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Men have attempted to produce a peaceful and just state of society by force, by law, by schemes of socialism; and one after another, all have failed: all must fail. There remains, then, nothing but the Cross of Christ, the Spirit of the life and death of Him who conquered the world by being the Victim of its sin.

2. The last reason given by the Apostle in rebuking a litigious and quarrelsome disposition in the Corinthian Christians is, that it contradicts the character of the Kingdom of God, of which they were members. A true kingdom of Christ should be altogether free from persons of this character. His argument runs thus : You ask me how quarrels are to be decided, except by law; how the oppressed are to be freed from gross oppressors, except by an appeal to legal justice; how flagrant crimes such as that condemned in the fifth chapter-are to be prevented in Christians? I answer, the Church of Christ does not include such persons in the Idea of its existence at all. It only contemplates the normal state; and this is the Idea of the Church of Christ: men "washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." But drunkards, revilers, extortioners, covetous men, gross sensualists, I cannot tell you how to legislate for such, for such ought not to be in your society at all. Regenerate thieves, regenerate libertines, regenerate extortioners! There is a horrible. contradiction in the very thought; there is something radically wrong, when such men, remaining in their vices, are imagined as belonging to the true kingdom of God. This is what you were as heathens; this is not what you are to be as Christians.

And here you observe, as usual, that the Apostle returns again to the great Idea of the Church of God, the invisible Church, Humanity as it exists in the Divine Mind; this is the standard he ever puts before them. He says, This you are. If you fall from this, you contradict your nature. And now consider how opposite this, St. Paul's way, is to the common way of insisting on man's depravity. He insists on man's dignity: he does not say to a man, You are fallen, you cannot think a good thought, you are half beast, half devil, sin is alone to be expected of you, it is your nature to sin. But he says rather, it is your nature not to sin; you are not the child of the devil, but the child of God.

Brother men between these two systems you must choose. One is the system of St. Paul and of the Church of England, whose baptismal service tells the child that he is a child of God - not that by faith or anything else he can make himself such. The other is a system common enough amongst us, and well known to us, which begins by telling the child he is a child of the devil, to become, perhaps, the child of God. You must choose: you cannot take both; will you begin from the foundation Adam or the foundation Christ? The one has in it nothing but what is debasing, discouraging, and resting satisfied with low attainments; the other holds within it all that is invigorating, elevating, and full of hope.

LECTURE XIII.

DECEMBER 14, 1851.

1 CORINTHIANS, vi. 12-20.—"All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. - Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. - Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. - What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? - For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's."

WE have divided this chapter into two branches, the first relating to the right method of deciding Christian quarrels. Our subject last Sunday was the sin of a litigious spirit, and this I endeavored to show in a twofold way-1st. As opposed to the power lodged in the Christian Church to settle quarrels by arbitration on the principles of equity and charity, which are principles quite distinct from law; one being the anxiety to get, the other the desire to do right. And in assurance of this power being present with the Church then, St. Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians of the Advent Day when it shall be completewhen the saints shall judge the world.". For the advent of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God, -is but the complete development of powers and principles which are even now at work, changing and moulding the principles of the world. If hereafter the saints

shall judge the world, "are ye unworthy now to juage the smallest matters?"

2d. The second point of view from which St. Paul *regarded the sinfulness of this litigious spirit was the consideration of the Idea of the Church of Christ. Christian quarrels! Disputes between Christian extortioners! The idea of the Church of God admits of no such thought" Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the spirit of our God."

I urged this as the apostolic mode of appeal — to men as redeemed, rather than to men as debased, fallen, reprobate. And I said further, that we must make our choice between these systems the one, that of modern sectarianism; the other, that of St. Paul, and, as I believe, of the Church of England. We must start from the foundation of Adam's fallen nature, or else from the foundation of Jesus Christ: we are either children of the devil, or we are children of God. St. Paul says to all," Ye are redeemed."

To-day we are to consider another question, What are the limits of Christian rights?

We can scarcely conceive that the Religion of Jesus Christ could ever be thought to sanction sin and selfindulgence. But so it was. Men in the Corinthian Church, having heard the Apostle teach the Law of Liberty, pushed that doctrine so far as to make it mean a right to do whatsoever a man wills to do. Accordingly he found himself called on to oppose a system of self-indulgence and sensuality, a gratification of the appetites and the passions taught systematically as the highest Christianity.

By these teachers self-gratification was maintained on the ground of two rights.

First. The rights of Christian liberty. "All things are lawful for me."

Secondly. The rights of nature. "Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats," and "God shall destroy both it and them.'

First. The rights of Christian liberty. They stiffly