offering." Can any one doubt, who sees the use made of the Old Testament in the New, that St. Paul would have said of this passage, as he said of the story of Hagar and Ishmael, "these things are an allegory"? He did not mean that they are only an allegory, but that it is their allegorical and spiritual, much more than their historical sense, which most concerns us. Seven days we wait, and He who alone can sacrifice for us comes not to us sensibly; nay, He seems to linger beyond his promised time; we pray and He has not seemed to hear; we are bound, and He has not yet delivered us; and the people are scattered from us; our strength for the battle seems not to gain, but rather to be lessened; our deliverance is in worse case than ever. And then we are tired of waiting, and we try to offer our own sacrifice; in some way or other, the ways are infinitely various, we try to help ourselves; be it by idolatry, be it by unbelief; bowing down to the form or the ceremony, and trusting to the priest's efficacy or the saints', or else saying that none of all these things are needed, that God will forgive our weakness, that mortal sins cannot lead to an immortal penalty. So it is that we offer our own sacrifice, such as we think will most serve our purpose, but we will no longer wait for Him who can alone redeem us. This is the one great lesson to press upon you, "wait for Christ."

Wait patiently, if

your prayers are cold, if your faith is weak, if your sins are many; still wait and watch, pray still, believe amidst unbelief; watch your lives and struggle with your sins, amidst your constant defeats. This is the state of him who through much tribulation enters into the kingdom of God; in your very disappointment, in your perseverance, in your hoping against hope, lies your victory; or rather the sign of your victory, the sign that you are Christ's people. Only wait and be not weary, for the night will come to an end at last.

And can any tongue adequately describe the joy, when they who so watch at last behold the dawn? Not the sun-he is not yet risen,—but the gracious dawn. Most touching is the natural dawn at this summer season, when the forms of things first and then their colours begin to appear to us: and there is a stillness over every thing, a freshness, yet a calmness inexpressible, the preparation as it were for the brightness of the full day. It is a true image of the spiritual dawn to them who have been long waiting. That is the dawn when prayer becomes welcome, when God begins to be realized to our minds, when we think of Him as our loving Father, and so begin to feel towards Him as His children. This is the dawn; not the day, for that may be still distant; the sun arises when the beasts of the field get them away together and lay them down in their dens, when

evil haunts us no more, and Christ is seen face to face. But the dawn brightening more and more unto the perfect day,-that is the Christian's course when he is truly Christ's, when he waits and is not weary. And what is their life on whom the dawn has so risen? May we not dwell upon it; enlarging only the description which is given in the text, and which virtually includes, and more than includes, all that can be said in unfolding it?

"The world seeth me no more, but ye see me; because I live, ye shall live also." For a long time we saw Him not, any more than the world saw Him; but now it is the dawn. What is it to have Christ become no more a name, nor a person of whom we read in the Bible, and who was on earth long ago; but One ever living, ever close to us, ever loving us, ever gracious unto us; the friend and the brother, the words are permitted to us in the Scripture,-the friend and the brother of the youngest and of the eldest; who can feel for the griefs and for the weaknesses of us all? We see Him that He is really alive; alive at God's right hand, with all power in heaven and in earth; and because He lives we live also. Not a perfect life, in which there is no death nor any thing like death; but we begin to feel that we too are not wholly dead, that there is a spiritual life in us also, derived from our communion with Christ; that we know what it is to forgive, what it is to be

patient, what it is to deny ourselves, what it is to believe, and to hope, and to love. These are life, or the seeds of life, at any rate, they will be ripened when the sun is risen; but they are quickened, they live under the dawn. Christ's Spirit is consciously within us, we are not perfectly but in some degree, not always, yet surely sometimes, spiritually minded.

"At that day," our Lord says further, "At that day, ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." You can see the words in the Bible; indeed they are there;-this promise, all gracious as it is, rising it might seem beyond the portion of humanity;-our blessed Lord did speak them, and His beloved disciple, St. John, who himself heard them, has recorded them. "Ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." When we feel spiritual life within us, then our eyes are more and more opened, and we know where we are. When our first parents sinned, it is said that their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked; they whose eyes are opened by the growth of spiritual life within them, know that they are not naked, not forsaken, not poor, not miserable; but clothed upon, and redeemed, and rich, and happy; that God is around them on every side; that they are-it may be spoken in no other words than in Christ's ownthat " they are in Him, and He in them." This

they know with an assured belief, with what may be called an actual consciousness; the world is now possessed as it were by God, and filled by Him altogether; the world is filled by God, and so are their own hearts besides.

And where is danger then, or uncertain walking; whether we are to pass our days at home or abroad; in public life or in private, in one profession or in another; whether the voice of dispute is raging around us, or error reigns without dispute all but triumphant: is not our path plain and sure, and does it not lead straight to heaven? Therefore wait for Christ; not carelessly or as men asleep, but wait and watch. This day speaks of the first descent of the Holy Spirit, when He came as the Spirit of power to bear witness to Christ outwardly; but the text in the Gospel speaks also of another descent, and more abiding and more perfect; not of the Holy Spirit of power only, but of the Holy Spirit alike of power, and of wisdom, and of love. This is our great and precious promise; in the certain hope of attaining to this, we are to watch and to wait. Therefore be of good courage, as many of you as are waiting but have not yet seen the dawn; who pray, but pray with effort; who believe, yet are full of unbelief. Still pray, and still believe, and still watch; turn not back; do not give up the point whereunto you have attained, but abide there with anxious patience. Watch