to act the part of a dissembler and deceiver, and to pretend great grief and infinite rage at the sight of his own act. Forthwith he must address himself to yet more desperate crimes in order to secure to himself and to his posterity the prize for which he has played so deep a stake. He remembers that the witches have promised to his friend Banquo a race of kings, and Banquo therefore, with his son Fleance, is doomed to die. As these and other similar deeds begin to father themselves upon their true author and the suspicions of his subjects become more and more openly expressed, he is driven farther and farther on in the career of crime, till murder becomes his daily employment, and he is continually occupied in planning new schemes to rid himself of the new occasions of anxiety and fear which arise around him. He finds that, save at a cost which he cannot contemplate,—the cost of utter temporal disgrace and ruin, he must go forward on the path he has entered. He recognises and faces the dreadful necessity, and girds himself to meet it,

'Come, fate, into the list,

And champion me to the utterance.'

It is one of the most common and most prevailing of the arguments addressed by the tempter to the young and the unwary,―Just this once, and all will be well; only this one dishonest act, and your fortune will be made for life; only this one taste of illicit indulgence, and your craving will be satisfied. He who yields to the temptation will infallibly find himself deceived. Absalom, when he became a rebel against his father's authority and grasped at his crown, had imposed on him the degradation of obeying the vile and crafty counsel of Ahithophel in regard to the women of his father's palace in the sight of all Israel.' Gehazi, after he had by lying to the Syrian captain obtained the gold and raiment he coveted, behoved to lie again to his master in order to secure the spoil. Deeds of dissimulation and of dishonesty, of oppression and of cruelty, inevitably bring other like deeds in their train. No important object can be gained by a single act, and if unrighteousness is the path that leads to the object we seek, then we must go through with it, and must tread the path faithfully and perseveringly. Not only so, it is for the evil-doer a dire necessity that to all unrighteousness falsehood must be added. It is not merely that falsehood is needful to shield from disgrace, even where the sinner has become indifferent to disgrace, he must, if it be possible, disguise himself to gain the good he desires. For in this world there are certain principles,-principles of mutual justice, trust, affection,-which form the cement of society, the open and proclaimed violation of which renders him who is guilty of it an outlaw. Hence, even those most regardless of righteousness must put on the appearance of righteousness and 'feign themselves just men,' if they are candidates for any of the forms of good which society offers. By the stern decree of Heaven hypocrisy is a vice which waits like a shadow on every other crime that men commit. All wrong-doers are doomed to live under the cloud of conscious falsehood. Evidently he can have pursued but for a short time the career of the transgressor whose life is not, even in so far as outward success and comfort are concerned, a conspicuous failure. There is nothing so difficult to maintain as consistency in falsehood, and the more sins we commit, the more lies we tell, so much the more arduous is it to retain hold on the confidence of those around us whose help is indispensable. Very speedily the men who say, 'We have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves,' are doomed to see their refuges of lies' swept away. If they are not prepared forthwith to forfeit their selfish gains

and to throw up the game of transgression and deceit,-if they cannot make up their mind to say, like the prodigal, 'I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father I have sinned,' and, like Zaccheus, to renounce the wages of unrighteousness and to restore fourfold, their career can end in nothing but disaster and defeat.

I have just adverted to the impossibility of retaining the confidence of men while pursuing a course of wrong-doing, and consequently of securely enjoying any of those forms of good which depend on the help and sympathy of our fellows. The loss of reputation, of esteem, of affection, the encountering of general aversion and suspicion, the doom of Cain,-to be driven forth as a fugitive and a vagabond,' with the fear 'every one that findeth me shall slay me,'-this in itself is a bitter element in the retributive consequences of transgression. This Macbeth in full measure realizes. Notwithstanding his efforts to avert suspicion from himself, and to direct it towards the two sons of his victim, the truth is speedily surmised, and secret whisperings begin to circulate. Says Banquo:

Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis,

As the weird sisters promised, and I fear

Thou play'dst most foully for 't.'

The thanes also hint to one another in guarded language their common suspicions:

'How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight

In pious rage the two delinquents tear

That were the slaves of drink, the thralls of sleep?
Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;
For 'twould have angered any man alive
To hear the men deny it. So that I say

He has borne all things well; and I do think

That had he Duncan's sons under his key,

As an't, please Heaven, he shall not, they should find
What 'tis to kill a father.'

As the usurper advances in his career of blood, the disaffection towards him becomes more and more universal and pronounced. A widespread revolt springs up against his authority, and a formidable opposition, gathering round one of the king's sons, is organized. All honest men begin

to exult in the increasing embarrassments by which the tyrant, as he has come to be called, is being hemmed in. Says Angus:

'Now does he feel

His secret murders sticking on his hands,
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach.
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love; now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.'

The criminal himself experiences the intense misery of knowing that he is universally hated, and that his death will be hailed with general joy:

'I have lived long enough, my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have, but in their stead
Curses not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny but dare not.'

The man who engages in a course of transgression may lay his account with having his misdeeds, even in this world, charged home upon him. It is a saying, 'Murder will out;' but the same irrepressibleness characterizes

common

all wickedness. Dishonesty, licentious indulgence, secret tippling, covetousness, inconsistency of conduct in every form, will come to light, so as to be recognisable more or less certainly and throughout a larger or smaller circle, through every veil, however plausible, of orthodox profession and pharisaic scrupulosity. As man has been made for and lives in society, so every breach of that law of righteousness and love which is society's proper bond becomes known to others, and calls forth their resentment and mistrust. Those only who respect the interests of their fellows and seek their good receive at their hands honour and affection. Scarcely' even ‘for a righteous man will one die; peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.' The principle enounced by Jesus Christ is of universal application, true for this world as for that to come: With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.' And there is profound and universal truth in the words of the Hebrew psalmist: With the merciful thou wilt show thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt show thyself upright; with the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt show thyself froward.'

6

It is a still more painful experience for the criminal to find himself deceived in his expectations of worldly honour and happiness, mocked by the infernal powers that tempted him to transgress, and disappointed in relation to the very prize for the sake of which he has defiled his conscience and destroyed his peace. Not unseldom, even on earth, is such disappointment realized; not unseldom are sinners doomed to feel that the objects for which they have bartered away their souls are eluding their grasp, and that they have sold themselves for nought.' It was a bitter thing for a clever man like Ahithophel to discover that his boasted wisdom was being turned to foolishness, that his able counsels were bursting like bubbles upon the stream, and that there remained for him nothing in this world but to go home and hang himself. It was a dark day for the proud, energetic, selfreliant Saul when at last he was forced to have recourse to the help of the poor witch who had contrived to elude his own pious zeal, and when from this quarter also there came only threatenings of disaster. Macbeth, too, is made to feel that the prize he has aimed at is escaping from him. The assassins who are hired by him to murder Banquo and his son Fleance bungle their work; Fleance escapes, and the murderer puts new rancours in the vessels of his peace' for an unaccomplished purpose. Thus one after the other his plans fail, and he discovers that the master to whom he has sold himself has deceived and is mocking him. Under the gloom of his thickening troubles he betakes himself to those 'weird sisters' who had at first allured him into the way of crime. The interview is not of a tranquillizing kind, as we may judge from the words uttered by him as they vanish:

'Where are they? Gone? Let this pernicious hour

Stand aye accursed in the calendar;

Infected be the air whereon they ride,
And doomed all those that trust them.'

6

Yet does he obtain from the consultation with the hags some reassurance. One declares:

another :

'None of woman born shall harm Macbeth;'

'Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.'

First the one stay, however, and then the other, disappoints his hope. The fresh promises are found in the trial to be only fresh enticements luring him on to his fate. Kept in the letter, they are broken in the spirit, and at last he is forced to own that he is being made the sport of hellish deception. Seeing the inevitable doom drawing nigh, he exclaims,—

'I pull in resolution, and begin

To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth.'

'Be those juggling fiends no more believed
That palter with us in a double sense,
That keep the word of promise to the ear,
And break it to our hope.'

Like Byron's Manfred he has to complain :

The spirits I have raised abandon me,
The spells that I have studied baffle me,

The remedy I recked of tortures me.'

His undaunted courage degenerates into desperate and brutal fierceness:

and he dies in the full consciousness that he has been cheated in regard to everything valuable and desirable in the hope by which he had been induced to swerve from the path of virtue. So are the paths of all that forget God, and the hypocrite's hope shall perish; whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's web. He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand; he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure.'

(To be continued.)

THE END OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY, AND HOW IT
IS TO BE ATTAINED.

AN ADDRESS AT THE ORDINATION OF REV. WALTER BROWN, A.M., SOUTH CHURCH,
GALASHIELS, BY REV. ROBERT MUIR, HAWICK.*

You are this day set apart to the ministry of the gospel over this infant congregation. If time had permitted, I might have referred somewhat in detail to the circumstances, so peculiarly interesting, attending your entrance upon this pastorate. It surely augurs well for the success of your ministry here, as well as indicates the self-sacrificing spirit in which you give yourself to this work, that while other and most inviting fields of labour were at your command,--rich gardens of the Lord, already well enclosed, and well cultivated by the hands of previous husbandmen,—you yet preferred, in association with a few earnest spirits, now the members of this congregation, to strike your plough into the open common. You have come here not to build upon another man's foundation, but first rather to lay the foundation, and thereupon to build. The considerations that have prompted you to this choice must surely have been such as could only have place in a mind largely possessed with the mind and will of Christ. You have addressed yourself to a task most difficult and arduous; but you have this for warrant and hope, that you are moving along the line of the divine commission, and He who has marked out your work for you will bless and prosper it.

In entering upon any important work, it is of the utmost importance that we form to ourselves a clear and definite conception as to what the work is, and that we keep its high aims ever before us. This is especially true of the work of the

*This church is the result of efforts of friends of Church Extension in Melrose Presbytery, who have done their work admirably. The new cause, under its zealous and able young minister, is full of promise. The ordination, which took place on 13th November last, was peculiarly interesting.

Christian ministry, which may be made to accomplish much good, in a lower sphere, in the way of educating men's morals and manners, and yet fails entirely of its proper purpose if it fails to bring sinners to Christ. A vague ministry— a ministry that deals in loose and colourless doctrine, or that wastes its energies from day to day in a sort of miscellaneous do-nothingism-is not only a useless ministry, but a positive injury to the cause of truth; and this, too, especially at a time when the failures and shortcomings of Christian ministers are made the most of, and are often studiously spoken of as if they did not belong to the individuals simply, but were inherent in the system which they so unworthily represented. Let me ask you, then, to set clearly before you what you have got to do. Your object is to bring sinners to Christ and to salvation. As a saved man yourself, you can surely have no lower aim than that certainly you can have no higher; for it is this high aim that brings you into direct sympathy with Christ, and with all that He has already accomplished or is now achieving in His mediatorial character. You have thus a high work, a definite one work to do, which I trust you will ever keep before you, and pursue with a holy and undeviating pertinacity. The advantage of such a lofty and definite object as this will be to unify, as well as consecrate, your labours as a minister of the gospel. They will no longer have a fragmentary and desultory character, when performed at the call of so lofty and definite a purpose. Besides, to bring sinners to Christ and to salvation, in the condition which Paul proposed to himself, when he said that his aim was to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus,-to do this will be found sufficiently exhaustive of your energies, and sufficiently comprehensive of the various portions of your work, whatever form almost they may assume. I think it is the late Mr. Jameson of Methven who, after remarking on the multitude of men and processes involved in fashioning a pin, goes on to dilate, in his own charming way, on the complexity and elaborateness of the operation by which a soul is perfected for Christ. In order to achieve this result, all the ministrations are necessary which you can supply in the pulpit and in pastoral visitation, in the Sabbath school and Bible class, at the sick-bed and in the house of mourning, as well as in performing other details of ministerial work which cannot here be particularized. And besides, the effort to accomplish this great end of your ministry will not leave you much time for trifling occupations or fashionable indulgences, even though such things were becoming in a minister of the gospel, or it could be conceived possible that you had any taste for them, when from day to day having resting on you the care of immortal souls.

Such, then, is the end and aim of your work as a minister of Jesus Christ. For the accomplishment of this end, you have a divinely contrived instrument, which this day is put into your hands, and which, like all other of the divine contrivances, is perfect in its adaptations, and, unless deceitfully handled by speaker or hearer, unfailing in its results. The gospel is declared to be the power of God unto salvation; and the preaching of the gospel is the agency by which this power takes effect. If, therefore, the power of God would operate through your ministry, and accomplish its grand saving results, the following things must be attended to :

And first, as God's method of bringing salvation is by a message, so the message must be faithfully reported. In plain language, preach the gospel. In the present day, the cry has been raised from various quarters that the pulpit is losing its power; and the remedy suggested by many who are loudest in the cry, or rather outcry, is one that, instead of remedying, would vastly aggravate the evils complained of. The proposed cure for ministerial incapacity, in so far as it does condescend on something definite and positive, would seem to lie in the direction of displacing the old gospel by something new, the newness consisting for the most part in this, that what is most distinctive of evangelical truth is to be left out. The remedy proposed is thus worse than the disease, granting that such a thing exists. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, when we consider that it comes from men who,, openly or covertly, are hostile to evangelical religion, who, it may be, have lost faith in the supernatural, and with whom nothing is more common than to ignore those facts concerning human nature on which the entire gospel, as a remedial system, is built? Happily for the gospel, and for