command more favourable conditions to overcome his enemy and ours. Just as we do, by repentance and faith, by childlike trust and clinging, by the continual exercise of graces and continual trust in the Master and Captain of our salvation, he rose to be the hero he was.

And the treasury is not exhausted; and the Benefactor is just as willing to bestow as ever, and His ear listens to the sounds of the faintest supplication, and His hand is stretched out that it may bestow the abundant blessing to-day. Dear friends, it is not physical courage that is the secret of this moral bravery. There are men in this world of ours who can climb, without flinching, the serried slope that is swept by the bristling cannon, who would be the first to plant the scaling-ladder against the parapet and climb the wall of a beseiged city, and who can go right up to the cannon's mouth in search of the bubble reputation, who yet are the veriest cowards in a moral duty, or when they have to maintain an unpopular principle, or when they have to avow a faith against the laugh of the

scorner.

It is Christian faith in action that is the stuff out of which martyrs are made. They are what they are from no muscular sinews or well-knit network of nerves, but from the indwelling and demonstration of the Spirit of God. You will be all of you tried. There are times in every man's life when the clouds pour down the waters that they have long been gathering, and when the skies send forth their mightiest thunderings of sound. Do you want to bear yourselves bravely in that day? Do you want to come off more than conquerors then? Do you want so to comport yourself that the temptation that bows your spirit to the dust, and aimost rends your heart in twain, shall not be able to shake your principles a hair-do you want that? Then let the life that you now live in the flesh be a life of faith in the Son of God. It is the daily drill that makes the battle hero. It is the breasting of the stream full oft that makes the swimmer strong. It is the orderly self-command in the vexations of the household, and in the wasp-like annoyances of every-day life, that prepares the soul for the confession made amidst a tempest of slander, and for the heroism when all the powers of battle are laughing at the carnage. God needs His Stephens yet, just as He did in the days when the first martyr lived. you ready to take up your cross? The flesh may be weak; is the spirit willing? You may not, you probably will not, have to pass through the martyr's agony. Have you anything of a martyr's feeling-of a martyr's heart? Have you souls of power that have come to Christ, and that have clung so closely to Him that for His sake they will be prepared to dare and do all things?

Are

The secret of all this bravery of the confessor before us is that he was a man full of faith. He realised the Invisible, and under its influence he went on conquering and to conquer.

II. I want to bring out that the lot of the Christian is generally a lot of persecution-an inheritance of persecution. There was nothing in the character of Stephen to account for this envenomed hostility shown him. He was learned and honourable, and, as the Church's almoner, his office was benevolent and kind; and he was consistent, and so his life was a keen power of rebuke to others. He was fearless and faithful, and so he made enemies. He was unanswerable, and that was a crime too great to be forgiven; and so they stoned him.

And if you look into Church history, you will find that the lot of the true Church has always been a lot of suffering. Take the old prophets, those kings of the former time, uncrowned; although they wielded an empire far more worthy of being wielded than the empire which depends on sceptres and palaces, yet they were the subjects of derision and of insult; all of them were derided, some of them were slain. Nearly all the primitive apostles weaved the martyr's amaranth into their crowns of thorns. There are many ways in which the spirit of persecution can be manifested, The husband may interpose to forbid his wife's devotion, or a father may be inexorable in the denial of his child's privilege, or the reward may be withdrawn, or the preferment withheld, or the suspicion insinuated, or another wing may be given to the slander.

There are a thousand ways in which the latent hate can be shown-a shrug of the shoulder can show it; a glance of the eye can show it; the deprecating hypocrisy that can lurk in the wave of a hand can show it. All these, in certain forms, have been abettors to this spirit; or the barbed adjective, the envious whisper, the dissembling smile, have burnt into a fire hotter than Smithfield ever gathered round about it. Brethren, do you know anything of this?

Persecution is the badge of our legitimacy. Do we know anything of this? If your course is against the world, it is the course of the thunder-cloud in whose heart there is the living fire. If you go with the world's followers, or with them so nearly and so constantly that they mistake you for one of themselves, they won't, persecute you. Is it therefore, I wonder, that the age of persecution has so largely ceased? Is it therefore because the witnesses have some. times faltered and sometimes borne false witness? Is it therefore that men have ceased to persecute us? Oh, then, we are the sort of prophets that men like-the prophets who prophesy smooth things, who daub over men's consciences with untempered mortar-prophets who make

the heart comfortable. Oh for the spirit of Micah, the son of Imlah, from whom the rebellious Ahab could extort nothing but, "As the Lord liveth, what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak." We must be faithful as God's witnesses; we must be tender too. If we tell them the Redeemer's testimony, we must deliver it with the Redeemer's tears. We must look straight-eyed and kindly upon the vilest, as a man ought to look upon a man, for we are both royal, although the one is wearing, and the other has worn his crown; but we must be still faithful as God's witnesses. We are part of His. Earnest in our protest against error, more earnest in our protest against wrong doing, all Christ's witnesses are bound to be thus faithful for the truth; and if we are, persecution cannot harm us. Unfaithfulness can and will.

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Unfaithfulness in the Church is like the deluge to the world a flood to drown it in destruction and perdition; persecution to the Church is like the deluge to the ark-the flood that only lifts it nearer and yet nearer to heaven.

III. I want to impress upon you that God's grace is always most intimately present when it is most sorely needed. I hope there are some hearts prepared to learn this lesson. In the former life of Stephen, before he was called upon to fill the office of witness and evangelist, no doubt he had grace according to his day, but with special and onerous duty there came replenishment and supply. Look how it came upon him like a baptism in the gloom of the fierce council, when all they that were looking upon him stedfastly saw his face as it had been the face of an angel! Listen! how it enabled him to testify to the divinity of Jesus, for he was the proto-martyr-nobody can rob him of that for the divinity of Jesus! Hark! how it trod out of his heart the last fiery emblems of malice and revenge.

The grace came just at the time he needed it. Yes, and the promise still is, "As thy day is You draw upon your resources once and think them exhausted, and that you have no right to go to the particular promise, as if there is no virtue in it now. Remember, "As thy days thy strength shall be." That text fits into days when the winter is dreary and the spirit of the hurricane waits to be let loose; days when the sky is leaden; days when the spirits are depressed; days when the sky is bright, and the air clear, and there is an elasticity in nature, and when the frost braces one up; days when, like the workmen of old, we must work with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other; all sorts of days. "As thy day"-they are all covered, they are all included "as thy days so shall thy strength be "

And have you not felt it and heard of it in the experience of those combatants who now

REMINISCERE, Remember," as found in Ps. xxv. 6-22. Such a cry for help is appropriate not only on this day, but every day in the many trials of life. This cry, to reach heaven,

Let us trace

must come from a heart of faith. what to-day's gospel says of faith. Let us also go beyond the usual limits of habit, the boundary of our weakly and defective spiritual experience, and learn from a heathen woman what faith is. We contemplate the great faith of the woman of Canaan in contrast with our little faith. In order to measure the greatness of her faith, consider

I. The poor soil in which it grew.

II. The discouragements through which it continued its growth.

III. The great victory which it finally achieved. I. 1. A weak woman. The Centurion of Capernaum was a brave soldier and had faith. Abraham, David, Paul, Luther and other heroes of faith were strong men-natures like the oak, hearts as firm as a rock. You say, "I ara not tough wood, I am but a weak reed, and such heroic courage cannot be expected of me." That might be true if faith had its power in the nerves and its marrow in the bones; but it is a spiritual warfare-it is nothing else than an unconditional surrender of the weak human heart to the eternal Omnipotence and Love. Who can say, I am too weak to surrender? Many a man may be too strong in his esteem, and small in consequence is his faith; whilst many a woman is stronger in faith than the strongest man. Let not woman, therefore, give up her faith, which is often her only weapon. 2. It is an ignorant heathen in whom the Lord finds such faith. Perhaps a rumour of the living God and the Messiah may have penetrated beyond the coast it was not much; "her whole theology, catechism and biblical knowledge consisted in the belief that there is a devil who torments people, that Messiah is to come who is able to help the troubled souls." Faith is not of the head, but of the heart; it is not the sum of knowledge, but it is the tendency of our disposition. Hence, even in a semi-heathen, it may

be true. "O woman, great is thy faith;" and many an educated soul in Christian lands might be addressed, Thy faith is small; small for so many means of grace." 3. She is a poor unfortunate one who shows this faith. When cares and afflictions press in on our souls, we think we can no longer pray, trust, or hope! But behold, just in the greatest grief, faith shows itself the strongest. The palm grows best when it is loaded down." Why is your faith so little just when it ought to be the strongest ?

no answer to our 66

II. As Joseph feigned he did not know his brother, so here (1) the Lord at first "answered her not a word." This conduct on the part of Jesus is quite new and unusual. Thou Living Word of the Father, wilt Thou not speak? Thou Physician of all diseases. dost Thou not know of a remedy in this case? Thou everlasting Pity, does not this suffering touch Thee? Thus we are tempted to ask, when the Lord does not respond to our tears, and we receive Remember, O Lord". neither in the Scripture nor in our experience, neither in our own soul nor from the lips of a friend. Then faith has its opportunity, not to desist, but persevere in prayer. The woman does it, and a severer trial follows. 2. The Lord breaks His silence, but He turns His face from her to others. "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." What! did he not say, "And other sheep I have which are not of this fold?" Here is one of these, calling and running after him, aud does He turn away to go to Israel? Yes, faith must learn the lesson of humility, patiently to submit to God's order and cherish the hope, He will not altogether forget me. But now comes the severest stroke. 3. The Lord declares her unworthy of His grace. "It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs." He that did not condemn the woman taken in adultery and raised the fallen Magdalene spoke this to her. Faith must learn this chief point-one's own unworthiness and to acknowledge to God that we are without any merit, wishing nothing and hoping nothing excepting the free favour of Look at her faith:

mercy.

III. 1. She conquers self and all the pride of her heart in the words, "Truth, Lord," and subdues her timidity with the brave word "yet." 2. She is equal to the tests applied by the Lord, and He praises her victory, "O woman, great is thy faith;" and rewards her with the gracious promise, "Be it unto thee even as thou wilt." 3. She conquers the world and her trouble: "Her daughter was made whole from that very hour." Our faith is the victory which overcomes the world. Lord, strengthen our faith.

Reminiscere.

REV. CHAS. GEROK, D.D., Dean in Stuttgart.

THE DARKNESS OF UNBELIEF. (REV. WILLIAM IVES BUDDINGTON, D.D.) If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!-Matt. vi. 23.

THERE is light in every man; light in his body and light in his mind; and there is resemblance between the two. Our Lord makes the constitution of the body, in respect to the means and conditions of knowledge, to represent that of the spirit. The mind has eyes as the body has, and there is spiritual light as well as natural. Let us consider the facts appertaining to the body, that we may understand the corresponding facts in our spiritual and immortal

nature.

I. The body has eyes to see with. They are the light of the body, in the sense that without them light would not be light to us. They do not create and dispense light of themselves, but they receive it; they are windows through which the light shines, and without them darkness would be utter and irremediable. Outward things, in form, size, distance, colour, are made known to us through the eyes.

II. We have light to see by, as well as eyes to see with; and the light is as necessary as the organ of sight. He that formed the eye created the light. and made sight no less dependent upon one than upon the other. Without light eyes are useless, and without eyes the light shines upon man in vain. Vision is the result of a two-fold agency-man's and God's. The constitution of the human body is a type of man's dependence upon God.

When

III. The eyes are subject to disease. healthy they are single; and although we have two eyes we speak naturally of the eye, for the two act as one; but when the eyes are diseased, they see double -two objects instead of one, and double-sightedness is worse than none, as false knowledge is worse than ignorance. Sometimes the eyes are intolerant of the light; sometimes they distort it so as to narrow or lengthen objects, and thus misrepresent them.

Now, all these three things are true of the mind, and equally true.

1. The mind has eyes-that is, organs to see the truth, to know realities in the world of thought, as the body has eyes to see visible realities in the material world. These eyes are the understanding and the reason. And there is just as much certainty in the knowledge the mind gains thus as there is in the knowledge acquired by eye-sight. A blind man, it is true, does not see the world, and a stupid man does not see the truth. The idealist disputes the existence of an outward world, and a Pilate asks, sneeringly, "What is truth?" But the common sense of mankind is equally unaffected in both cases. Furthermore, as our natural eyes perceive the colour of objects as well as the

objects themselves, so the mind has perception of the quality of action as just and beautiful, or the opposite. And this faculty is conscience, or the moral sense.

2. But, as the eyes are dependent upon light, so are our minds dependent upon the light God sheds upon us. There is a primeval light of creation and Providence. Reason is developed and educated by coming into contact with the universal and supreme reason God has made to be embodied in His works. Were it possible to conceive that man had been created in the midst of chaos, on the first instead of the sixth day, and before the formless void had been shaped into the orderly and beautiful Kosmos, his reason would never have been developed; he would not have been a rational being, but a crazy one. So conscience needs light-the light of experience and exercise in the midst of a moral world; it grows by doing, by suffering and rejoicing. Paul teaches that had man remained unfallen, innocent and holy, he would have found light enough in nature as God originally ordained it ; but when he became a sinner he needed the supplemental light of a divine revelation. Christ was "the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world ;" and whether the last clause describes man or Christ, the meaning is the same for substance. Both Christ and man came into the world-the one by incarnation and the other by natural birth; and Christ is the light of every man. How often and how emphatically did Christ assert this of Himself, "I am the light of the world." For a man to declare his independence of the light Christ brings, and say that reason and conscience are enough for him, is as absurd as to say that he has no need of the sun, his eyes are enough for him,

3. But there is a third fact to be observed. While the mind has eyes, and God gives spiritual light fitted to those eyes, so the mind's organ of vision is subject to disease. The truth is sometimes painful to the soul, as light is to the eye. We may go to the young ruler who went away from Christ sorrowful because he could not receive Christ's conditions of discipleship. The proud and tyrannical priests of Jerusalem were tortured into rage by the doctrine of a suffering Messiah. Jesus summed up the causes of His rejection by the Jews, " Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life." Sometimes the truth, when ostensibly received, is distorted. From the very beginning there were heresies in the Church of Christ, as all the apostolic epistles testify; and the apostle Paul classes them with such other works of the [flesh as "wrath, strife, and seditions." Peter declared that false teachers should arise among the disciples of his own time, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies. even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction," It is

everywhere the doctrine of the Bible that men's hearts are so averse to God that they have no true knowledge of Him, "becoming vain in their imaginations, their foolish heart being darkened." What is wisdom in God becomes foolishness as seen by men; what is power to Him is weakness to them. "That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God." How mournful but how true are the words of our Lord, "If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness; if, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness !"

1. How great as to the kind of it. Physical blindness is a great calamity. To be in a room hung with pictures and no light to see them is a grief; to be in a world with infinite expressions of the Creator's power and wisdom and not to see them is an unutterable loss. But to be in the midst of a spiritual world which is the habitation of God, and which is filled with proofs of His eternal love, reconciling His mercy and justice, vindicating His providence, exhibiting the sources of blessedness alike human and divine, revealing His fatherhood and "the inheri tance of the saints in light"-to be before such realities, and have no eyes, no light, how great is that darkness!

2. How great in respect of guilt! If it were darkness for want of light, that darkness would be innocent, and gradually pass away before the light. If it were darkness for want of capacity to see, it would be innocent. But the darkness which comes from alienation from the light, how great is that darkness in respect of guilt!" If ye were blind," said Jesus to them that fought against the light and denied it, “ye should have no sin; but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth." To believe a lie for the love of it is to sin against the truth as truth ; and this is a guilty darkness.

3. It is also hopeless. Such darkness is not from the want of light, but of eyes. It is the doom of those "having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts."

See

OUTRAM, W., DD. Ser. 89.-ENG. PREACHER. 8, 133-STEPHENS, Dr. W. Ser. 3, 133 THE OBSTACLES TO A CHRISTIAN LIFE AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM. (T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.) Strive to enter in at the strait gate,-Luke xiii. 24. IT is a tremendous thought that in a short time this great audience, every one, will be in heaven or in hell! I know no words more solemn and more tender than the words of the text. Alongside of the great gate, through which people and camels passed into an ancient

city, and which was closed in the evening, was a narrow gate. Through this narrow gate, called the needle's eye, the belated traveller could with difficulty force his carnel. Getting to heaven is no easy matter. It is not represented as easy in the Bible.

I. Let us consider the obstacles

1. Pride. The gospel puts all men on the same level. Humility is the first step. We do not wish heaven as a gratuity-men ashamed to be thought anxious for their souls!

2. Some special sin. (a) Enmity. (b) The wine cup. You must give up your darling sin or give up heaven.

3. The spirit of worldliness. Many are afraid that religion will hurt their worldly prosperity

that the chariot of the gospel will run over and crush their businesses. What a mistake! Religion will add to worldly prosperity. But are men going to measure off their immortality with a yard stick, weigh their eternal hope with a steelyard, trade off the key of heaven for the key of a warehouse ?

You see there are difficulties to be encountered in getting to heaven. I hear it sometimes said to the anxious: It is as easy to become a Christian as to turn your hand. That is false. To become a Christian will be the most momentous struggle of your life. Yet I am not sent on a fool's errand to-night, to tell you the obstacles to heaven and not how to overcome those obstacle's.

II. How to overcome these obstacles.

1. The first thing to be done is not to give up your sins, but to lay hold of Christ. In college you graduate and then get your diploma; but in the Christian life you get your diploma first. Christ hath God exalted to give repentance. He is all. It is He who throws open the gates of the sun to the soul.

2. Then pray. Prayer is no indefinite wish. It is the energy of the soul red hot. There is one word that will open all the doors of eternal life-" Help."

3. Read the Bible. (a) Consider it not as an intellectuality, (b) but as a warm expression of God's love for the soul. The difference-a chart, a compass, loo ked upon by the child as a toy, and the same viewed by the mariner in the midst of a Caribbean. cyclone.

Waiting for gracious influence will not save. "Strive." Your prospects for heaven will never be so good as to-nig ht-never have been so poor as to-night. Oh, wasted opportunities! Add not to the obstacles to heaven by another moment's delay.

See

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TAYLOR, Bp. J. Works 1, 115.-IBBOT, Dr. Disc. 1, 342.-SHERLOCK, Bp. Works 1, 326. -TILLOTSON, Abp. Ser. 7, 310.

II. The measure of supply-"All your need according to His riches in glory. (a) All you need-all temporal need by His Providence, all spiritual need by His grace and spirit; (b) More than you need-a goodly heritage-an overflowing cup. Real wants are few. But there are gifts to gratify every taste. (c) Not by the standard of earth, but of heaven. riches in glory."

"His

III. The channel of supply-"By Jesus Christ." (a) One like yourselves, "The man Christ Jesus," who is "God manifest in the flesh '-see Heb. ii. 14. (b) One made perfect through suffering-Heb. ii. 10; v. 7, 8. (c) One merciful and faithful-Heb. ii. 17, 18; iii. 15, 16; v. 2. (d) The eternal and unchangeable-Heb. vii. 24, 25; xiii 8.

An abundance of peace shall be multiplied unto him who is in his secret heart steadfastly resolved not to suffer from imaginary ills.

It is not the best things, that is, the things which we call best, that make men It is not pleasant things; it is not the calm experiences in life. It is life's rugged experiences, its tempests, its trials. The discipline of life is here good and there evil, here trouble and there joy, here roughness and there smoothness, one working with the other; and the alternations of the one and the other which necessitate adaptations, constitute a part of that which makes man a man, in distinction from an animal which has no education.

A man rises in the morning, and washes himself and brushes his hair, and then he says, "I must read a portion of the word of God;" and he sits down and reads the last half of the last chapter of the 2 Corinthians; and when he has done reading, he says, "It is all good, very good indeed;" and he gets up and down to goes breakfast, and thinks he is all right because he has read the Bible. He thinks he is safe, as one does who has nailed a horseshoe over the door with the idea that the witches cannot go under it.-Beecher.