in the morning, and that you can read their speeches, not you only, but hundreds of thousands. next morning perfectly reproduced and reflected. The Christian, seeing great power in the printing-press, employs it; seeing great power in speech, he employs it; recognizing the means of glorifying Christ by missions, he charters the ocean steamer, consecrating it to the noblest of ends. Thus the Christian's path becomes a victorious one, making the weakest things contribute to God's praise, and the most reluctant things trophies of God's glory; waiting patiently for that day when all sounds shall be harmony, when all sights shall be beauty, when all feelings shall be bliss, when all hearts shall be bounding and none breaking, and the Prince of Peace shall sway his benign and glorious sceptre from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.

Let me notice one other feature in the sun's rise-his path is a beneficent path. He warms the air as he rises which the invalid is to breathe; he ripens the corn for the sickle of the reaper, when nature recognizing his beneficence and bounty sits amid her ripe sheaves like a mother amid her children blessing and praising God; he sets the bird as he gains power in his march to build its nest, and the farmer to plant and sow; he rends the Polar ice to be a pathway for the imprisoned ship to return to her own shores; and the invalid, feeling the approach of summer, thanks God, and takes hope that the lease of life is likely to be a little longer. His whole path therefore is beneficent. So with the Christian-he walks through the world a blessing, a shower of blessings. Made himself a light from on high, he lets his light so shine that others seeing his good works may glorify his Father which is in heaven. Let me ask, are you thus beneficent? What nook in London has one ray more because you are a Christian? What young or old person in England has a happy memory of you having come into contact with him or with her? What miserable den has been illuminated by the light and splendour of your presence? Of all poor unhappy people upon earth that from the very

heart I pity, it is those who like a vortex are always absorbing, and never like a fountain welling up in refreshing blessings upon the earth and amidst mankind. We do not know sufficiently the luxury of doing good; and one marvels that any one can walk through this world and not feel it to be an instinct of humanity, and one marvels yet more at what is all but impossible, that any man can be a Christian, and traverse the city, the market, the street, the school, the cottages of the poor, the homes of the wretched, the dens of the depraved, and not try to leave on some spot a memory more glorious than if you had built a magnificent cathedral, and write upon some heart an inscription that will be luminous amidst the light and glories of the eternal morn. For we all know and we ought to feel, what we are very prone to forget, that whilst we are justified by a righteousness that is not our own, that does not excuse us from doing good, but is the mightiest motivespring to do the highest, the intensest, and the noblest good. And certainly if we may take the picture of the future from that book whose portraits are perfect because inspired, we there read: "Make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations." What does that mean? It is this; you have got wealth, wealth does not mean enormous sums; any one who has sixpence beyond what he needs is a rich man; he who has only £100 a year and lives on £99 is a rich man, while he who has £100,000 a year and lives on £120,000 a year is a very poor man indeed; but if you have something over, what are you to do with it? The answer is, as a Christian you are to consecrate it to the service of God and the good of your fellow-men. But how will the objects of it receive you into everlasting habitations? What I understand by it is this: that those you have benefited by your liberality, those you have made wiser and happier by your contributions, the widow's heart you have made to sing for joy, the orphan child you have inspired with a sublime hope, or clothed and sheltered from the cold by the raiment you have

and

given him, will stand at the very gates of heaven amidst the throngs that are there and bid you welcome, recognizing in you a benefactor, giving God the glory. That does not mean that it entitles you to heaven, but "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, they rest from their labours and their works do follow them." The cup of cold water that you give to a disciple is not forgotten; because it is not merit we do not therefore say it is not fruit; it is the fruit of grace, it is the evidence of a regenerated heart. And you, if I address such, who minister to the world, to the unenlightened light, to the hungry bread, to the naked raiment, to the ignorant instruction, to all a blessing, rejoice that God has honoured you to make you instruments of such goodness; be not proud-God forbid ! because it is to grace that you owe all; but be thankful that you are tasting of the highest happiness, which imperial Cæsar had not learnt to recognise the luxury, the noble, the sublime luxury of doing the greatest good to the greatest number of mankind.

A time draws near when all the clouds that refuse now to be scattered, and all the mists that need to be dissolved, will pass away. At present the sun even in his meridian is in some degree horizontal; but one day the sun will be vertical, and there will be no shadow, and yet there will be no intolerable fervour. At present the best is accompanied with shadows, the purest has the alloy of imperfection; but at that day when the sun shall reach his meridian throne, and shed down no perishable splendour, and shall have no western declension, to be buried in the banks of clouds that gather in the west, but shall shine with a splendour that is never intercepted by a cloud, and never can be wasted by time; then we shall no more look through this body as a poor, thick, rugged glass darkly, nor through this dim medium as an imperfect, twisted, distorted mirror dimly, but we shall see even as we are seen, know even as we are known; and as the material part of our nature becomes thinner, and the spiritual and the nobler becomes stronger, we shall begin to see

something of the glory before we plunge into it; for it is remarkable that the most eminent Christians in the hour of death have seemed to have seen lifted a nook of the veil that intercepts our view of the eternal world, and to have caught sights, and to have heard sounds, and to have tasted a prelibation and an earnest of that blessedness which shall have no bounds and no end, the blessedness of being for ever with the Lord.

LECTURE XXVI.

THE JEWISH WORSHIPPERS.

THE cast out and cast down, but not cast off children of Abraham have before them a glorious restoration, for

"It shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover_the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."-ISAIAH xi. 11.

And

ENSIGN is the translation of the Hebrew word Jehovah nissi; "the Lord our standard." The same Hebrew word is applied to the brass serpent; "Ye shall make a serpent of brass, and set it up for a niss, a standard." From these two expressions we may justly infer that the standard, or ensign, to be set up in the future is the Saviour himself; and this, therefore, is the true solution of that prediction in Matthew xxiv. 27: "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven," i. e. the ensign, the standard. When that ensign, or standard, shall be lifted up, all nations shall see it, and the last and concluding conflict of this economy will take place. The lifting up of this ensign will be the signal for assembling God's scattered people, the tribes of Judah and of Benjamin, which are in our sight; and the assembling from their hiding-places, wherever those hiding-places are, of the ten tribes of Israel now out of