grace, and not believing felt no peace? Let me try to illustrate this. When the minister in a representative capacity, in the person of Christ, declares absolution to a sinner, his absolution is not lost if the man rejects it, or cannot receive it; for it returns to him again, and he has done what he could to show that in Christ there is a full absolution for the sinner, if he will take it. Remember what Christ said to the Seventy : "When ye enter into a house, say, Peace be to this house; and if the Son of Peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it; if not, it shall return to you again."

The validity of St. Paul's blessing depended on its reception by the hearts to whom it was addressed. If they received it they became in fact what they had been by right all along, sons of God: they "set to their seal that God is true."

"Grace and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ." For the special revelation of Jesus Christ is, that God is our Father, and when we believe that, not merely with our intellects, but with our hearts, and evidence in our lives that we believe it, and that this relationship is the spring of our motives and actions, then will flow in the "Peace which passeth all understanding," and we are blessed indeed with the blessing of God.

LECTURE III.

June 29, 1851.

1 CORINTHIANS, i. 4-13.-"I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;-That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:-So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:-Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.-God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.-Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.-For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.-Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.-Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?"

OUR work to-day will be from the commencement of the fourth to the end of the thirteenth verses, in which we find two points; first, the Apostolic congratulations from the fourth to the tenth verse; and, after that, the Apostolic warning and rebuke, from the tenth to the end. First, then, the Apostolic congratulation-"I thank my God always on your behalf," &c. Let us remark here how, in the heart of St. Paul, the unselfishness of Christianity had turned this world into a perpetual feast. He had almost none of the personal enjoyments of existence. If we want to know what his life was, we have only to turn to the eleventh chapter of the second Epistle: "Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I

beaten with rods, once was I stoned," &c. That was his daily outward life; yet we shall greatly mistake the life of that glorious Apostle if we suppose it to have been an unhappy one. It was filled with Blessedness; the blessedness which arises from that high Christian faculty through which a man is able to enjoy the blessings of others as though they were his own. Personally, we get very little in this world. The prizes are few and if we are to mourn that we never had a whole kid to ourselves "to make merry with," life will become desolate indeed. Only by saying, "It is meet we should rejoice and be glad" with our brethren, can life be a blessing. Then it becomes a perpetual feast. All joys of others become ours,

"I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth

With boundless love."

Thus the

"I thank my God always on your behalf." Apostle, in all his weariness and persecutions, was nevertheless always rejoicing with his Churches; and especially he rejoiced over the gifts and graces given to the Corinthians, of which he here enumerates three: first, Utterance, then Knowledge, and then the grace of that peculiar attitude of Expectation with which they were looking for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He speaks of the gift of Utterance, and we shall understand his reason for calling it a gift rather than a grace, when we remember that, in his conception, Charity was far above Knowledge. To him a blessing was nothing, unless it could be imparted to others. Knowing a truth is one thing: being able to express it, is quite another thing: and then again, to be able to express a truth is one thing; but to dare to do it is another thing altogether. "Utterance"

implies both power and courage. Hence it comes to pass that the deepest theologians are not necessarily the world's greatest benefactors. A truth hidden is unproductive. And therefore the power of utterance becomes, by the grace of God, truly a faculty Divine.

But again, there may be utterance without knowledge. St. Paul desired Utterance in order to speak out something in him. With many persons utterance is only verbiage, concealing the poverty of thought in a mere fluency of words. Accordingly, in this day, when utterance abounds, when every platform, every pulpit, or journal teems with utterances, the thing to be pressed upon us is, that Knowledge is a grace. Let us seek, not merely to have utterance, but to have something worthy of uttering. In this present Babel of politics and theology, let us learn the dignity of silence: let us be still-silent before God, that we may have Knowledge. To know! how blessed! Be sure you speak that you do know, and nothing else. St. Paul thanks God for the knowledge his converts possessed; for utterance without knowledge is worthless. He did not value these things merely for themselves, but only as they were means to an end-channels for conveying truth to others.

The last gift for which the Apostle thanks God in this place was their attitude of Expectation—they were waiting for the coming of the Lord. He says, "So that ye come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of the Lord;" as though that were the best gift of all; as if that attitude of expectation were the highest that can be attained here by the Christian. It implies a patient, humble spirit, one that is waiting for, one that is looking

forward to, something nobler and better. The Apostle seems by this to tell us that the highest spirit is shown rather in calm expectation of that Kingdom, than in disputing how it shall come; in believing that it must come, and silently waiting for God's own time for the revealing. We make two observations on this point:

1. We are to look for a Church of the future-not of the past, nor of the present. The Coming of Christ—whatever that means-includes the perfect state of human society. Not hereafter, in a world beyond, but here: the Coming of Christ to us, not our going to Him. And the perfect attitude is to be looking forward to this: not busying ourselves in dreams about, and mournings after, the past, nor complacently praising the present, but thankful to God for what we have, feeling that the past was necessary; and still dissatisfied with ourselves, hoping something better yet, both for God's Church and World.

2. It implies a humble expecting state: not dogmatizing, not dreading, but simply waiting. The Kingdom of God is within us; but the Kingdom of God developed will be as the lightning, sudden and universal. Therefore our Lord says, Go not forth if any man says, "Lo! here or lo! there." Be quiet-it will come. Patiently, humbly, watchfully waiting for that which shall be-that should be our Christian attitude.

St. Paul's congratulation contains a ground of hope for the continuance and successful issue of those blessings"God shall confirm you to the end;" and again, "God is faithful." He relies not on any stability of human goodness, he knows that he cannot trust to their inherent firmness or fidelity; his ground of confidence for the