which drew from dying lips the cry, "Welcome pain! welcome the cross! welcome dark death! for it is my glory to bear them, O my Saviour, with thee!"

"Rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings," for such suffering for sin as that of which we have spoken is the badge of a Christ-like nature, the proof of a spirit akin to His. Gladness is not the truest sign of a noble nature in such a world as this. There is a sadness that rises from a deeper source in man's nature than the light sparkle of superficial joy. There is a profound melancholy more enviable than rapturous delight. There are tears that sometimes spring "from the depths of a divine despair." In the contemplation of evil, the sight of the suffering and strife and wretchedness and wrong, which oppressed the Saviour's soul, what but a superficial nature can be selfishly joyous? There is enough of sorrow and sin, surely, still left in the world to make a thoughtful mind no stranger to that grief which hung like a perpetual shadow over the spirit of Jesus. holding the desolation and ruin of souls, what man who loves his brother can remain unvisited by that agony of love and pity which broke the heart of Christ? A child will sport with thoughtless levity over graves, where man's deeper nature will stand in reverent awe and contemplation; but it is better

Be

to be sad with the wise man than merry with the child. There are men so vain and superficial, or so hard and selfish, that, leave them but their animal enjoyment, let them alone in their epicurean sloth and selfishness, and the moral ruin of a world would fail to move them; but who would not rather weep with Jesus than be dry-eyed with these!

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Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ," for if yours be His sorrows, yours also shall be His joys. "When His glory shall be revealed, ye shall be glad also with exceeding joy.” “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him." "If so be that we suffer with Him, we shall be also glorified together." Your capacity of holy suffering is the proof and the measure of a capacity of holy joy. The ear that is most pained by discordance, knows best the pleasure of sweet sounds. The heart which enmity or estrangement wounds the deepest, has ever the most exquisite susceptibility to love; and the oppression and sadness of the spirit amidst a world of imperfection and evil, is the silent prophecy and the sure criterion of that joy unutterable which awaits it in a world where the triumph of truth and goodness shall be complete. If inevitable contiguity with sin distress you, estimate by your present pain the blessedness of that glorious future when you shall breathe the

atmosphere of unmingled love and purity, when sin shall be a thing forgotten, or remembered only to enhance the deep joy of eternal good. If here, with the world's best Benefactor, your heart bleeds with an almost personal sense of injury for the souls in which sin is working bitter wrong, anticipate the exultation of that coming era when you shall company with none but the good, when spirits redeemed from sin, bright with ineffable purity, shall be your perpetual associates; and when you and they light in every mind, love in every heart -shall wander side by side with Jesus amid the sun-bright expanses of eternity. If here, oppressed with "the bondage of corruption," you sigh with the indignant impatience of the captive for the emancipation of the world from evil, conceive the rapture of that hour which the rapid years are hastening on, when the captivity of sin shall cease for ever, and you shall leap forth to liberty!

SERMON VII.

SPIRITUAL REST.

"Return unto thy rest, O my soul !"-PSALM CXvi. 7.

THE blessings of religion are often represented in Scripture as comprehended under the idea of "Rest,' and the rise of the religious consciousness, the stirrings of spiritual anxiety and aspiration, as the instinctive yearning of the soul after its true rest in God. Moreover, we are taught to conceive of this rest, not as a new and arbitrary gift to man, but as that which is, in some respects, the soul's ancient and original heritage. Religion is to be regarded, not as an acquisition, but as a restoration-not as the gaining of a new friend or home, but as the recovery of a lost Father-the going back to a former home hallowed by ancient memories, and reviving in the heart a thousand dormant associations. "I will arise and go unto my Father." "Return unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast

fallen by thine iniquity." "Return unto thy rest, O my soul !"

Now it is this thought which furnishes the true explanation at once of the soul's misery and rest

lessness in sin, and of that repose it finds in reconciliation to God.

and peace which

For the deepest unrest is ever that of things or beings in an unnatural or distorted condition-the unrest of aberration from a proper place or course, and so, of interrupted harmony and equipoise. The restless streams and brooks fret their mountain channels till they reach their proper depths in river or sea ; and the waves of the sea itself, disturbed by the storm, heave and sway themselves to rest in their natural and common level again. The thunderstorm is but the voice of Nature's unrest, when the balance and equipoise of her elements are disturbed, and she seeks to regain the wonted repose of harmony and law. And so, in the moral world, the disquietude, dissatisfaction, restlessness of the ungodly, finds its interpretation in nothing so much as this, that in sin the soul is in an unnatural state. For although to fallen man sin has become a second nature, it is never to be forgotten that the make and structure of his being is not for sin, but for holiness. The original type of humanity is to be found in God. The normal condition of the spirit of man is one of holy union and communion with Deity. And in the feverish desires, the fretting cares and toils and hopes and anxieties of

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