they shall shut thee out, and when thou mayest need all the pity and all the help which the spiritual guide can give unto thee. Distinguish, I say again, between the sin that thou dost condemn and the sinner whom thou must still love-the child of God over whom thou

must still weep. Ah, sirs! there may be some of you here who speak with bitter contempt and scorn of those who, notwithstanding their frailties, are better men than yourselves. God may have suffered some sin to attain a great predominance over them for a season. Perhaps, if all were known of you, you might be proved to be worse than they;-and oh! were the Lord to take his bit from your mouth, and the bridle of his divine providence from your jaws, you might run to greater excesses of riot still. Who maketh thee to differ? What hast thou that thou hast not received? Say in thy soul, "By the grace of God I am what I am;" but stand not up with the self-righteousness of the Phariseesay not, "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are."

Leaving now this point of caution, let us consider, by way of counsel, what positive suggestions may arise. If we be thus depraved, and know not the full extent of our depravity, what then should we do? Surely we should daily mourn before God because of this great sinfulness. Full of sin we are. Let us constantly renew our grief. We have not repented of sin to the full extent, unless we repent of the disposition to sin as well as the actual commission of sin. We should deplore before God, not only what we have done, but that depravity which made us do it. See how David repents. He does not merely mourn for sin, but he

says, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." He makes it a part of his confessions, that iniquity was in his inward parts, and that his soul was tainted from the birth. So be it with you: weep over the nature as well as over the development of the nature. Weep not over the fountain merely, but over the deep spring from which this fountain gushes; not merely over the coin of sin which has been minted into outer acts, but over that base bullion of iniquity which lies uncoined in your heart. Every day exposes this, as well as the sins you have committed, before God. Lay before God, not merely thy crutches, but thy lameness; not merely thy ceremonial defilement, but the deep leprosy that is in thy skin and in thy bone. Yea, mourn over it, and beg him by his grace to cleanse thee, that thou mayest enter into his kingdom. And when thou hast thus done, take heed that thou walk every day very near to God, seeking daily supplies of his grace. Brethren, I charge you, and specially do I charge myself here, let us look up to God, let us hourly depend upon him, feeling that yesterday's grace is of no use whatever for to-day; that the grace which saved us seven years ago is not the grace that can save us now, but we must have fresh supplies. Oh, there be many, I think, who sit down and say, "I did once know Christ." That is not enough, brethren; we must know Christ each day, we must have fresh grace each hour. It is not once to be partaker of the divine nature, but to be daily a partaker of it. Doth the tree bear the fruit by the sap of seven years ago? Is it not the sap of this year which will produce the seed of this year's fruit?

And

you are

must it not be so with you? Must you not have daily influxes of the divine influences of the Holy Ghost? Must you not receive from Christ each hour that life without which you must droop and die? Oh, brothers and sisters, let no day pass by without commending yourselves to God; let no hour be spent without resting under his wing. Oh, may our daily habit be to cry unto him, “Hold thou me up and I shall be safe." Oh, my dear hearers, there are some of you who think not vile. You have never had your eyes opened to learn your depravity. Let me tell you this, that you are so depraved that except you be born again you cannot see the kingdom of God. You may reform, you may go and seek to make yourselves better. It will not do. Know the old proverb and consider it: "The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." Ay, the nature is so base the nature itself is so depraved and so vile—that there must be a radical change of the whole self. How then canst thou change thy nature? Canst thou renew thine own heart? God forbid that thou shouldst be so vainly infatuated as to imagine it possible! No arm but the eternal arm can make thee what thou shouldst be. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Canst thou make thyself a new creature in Christ? Thou canst not create a fly or a grain of dust, much less create thyself a new heart. But there is one who can. The Holy Spirit is able, Jesus Christ is willing. Dost thou would renew my heart to-night?"

say, "Oh, that he Methinks he has

begun the work; that desire of thine, if sincere, would prove it. Remember what he bids thee to do is to trust.

If thou hast longing desires for him, cast thyself down at his feet and say, "Jesus, salvation is brought nigh to me; I trust in thee to make known in me this strange, this God-like grace. Work in me the new heart, the divine life, the new nature; save me, save me, Jesus ; put my feet in the narrow way, and then guide me all the days of my pilgrimage and bring me to thyself, that where thou art, in heaven, there I may be with thee." Sinner, he will do it, he will hear thy cry and answer thy petition, and thou, in the heights of heaven, shall sing of the mercy which received thee when thou wast not worthy to be received, of the love which loved thee when thou wast wholly unlovely, and of all the grace which changed thy nature and made thee meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. God grant that we may not, any of us, be as Hazael, the perpetrators of crimes of which we never suspected ourselves capable; but rather, feeling that we are men and women of the same kith and kin as the vilest sinners that ever trod this earth, may it be our grateful surprise and our happy lot to be justified freely by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So shall we be numbered with the saints now and throughout eternity. Amen.

Lovely, but Laching.

"One thing thou lackest."-Mark x. 21.

HOUGH the gospel of Jesus Christ most certainly addresses itself to the vilest of the vile, it is not exclusively to such that the message of salvation is sent. There are,

indeed, no characters so far gone in vice that the gospel does not speak to them.

However abandoned they may be, still is this inviting voice sent to the very chief of sinners— "Come to Christ and live." But the gospel, with equal affection, addresses itself to those who are not upon any common estimation to be numbered with the chief of sinners, to those, forsooth, whose moral integrity has been unimpeachable, whose outward propriety has been scrupulous, whose lives in all their domestic and social relations have been commendable. There are always some such individuals in our congregation. We are very thankful that there are. We have an invitation for them as frank, as honest, and as earnest, as for wanton sinners, heinous transgressors, and hardened criminals, and our sincere desire is that such may be saved; for we believe that they also will make illustrious