to express the cry of our soul. And God has heard us, and come into our souls, and fulfilled his promise that he would be in us; and has given us a sense of his presence and favor which we would not exchange for a kingdom, no, not for a world. How many humble and devout souls have spoken of this sense of pardoned sin as the most thrilling emotion which it is given to mortal heart to know, the corner-stone of all religious peace, without which the path of virtue is a path of disagreeable restraints, and all outward worship a heartless formality! So was it to those alluded to in the text. See how the case of the Pharisee and publican confirms the truth which I have now set forth. The Pharisee went down from the Temple to his house, thankful that he had offered his prayers, and that he could give so good an account of himself to his Maker and Judge. But was there a deep current of peace flowing through his inmost soul? Had he no half-consciousness of something covered up and hollow within? I tell you that the publican went down to his house justified rather than the other, because he felt in a true relation to God, - because he felt that, in his degradation and guilt, which he laid all open and lamented, God had yet come to him, and had blessed him with his mercy and his love.

My friends, the great lesson which I would have you learn from what I have now said is this: there is but one gate through which we can come acceptably to God, and that is the gate of penitence and self-renunciation. God might have made human condition differently. Starting from the innocence of infancy, he might have ordained that we should never fall, but should ever advance towards angel and archangel excellence and

blessedness.

But this is not the constitution of things
We each fall from our native

under which we live.
purity, and pass through the waters of sin. It seems
mysterious to us how this is connected with our higher
advancement, but so no doubt it is. The growth of
some of the highest and noblest virtues is favored by
that deep penitence and self-abasement to which we are
called. Such are the virtues of gentleness, compassion
for others, distrust of ourselves, a keener sense of God's
goodness, a humble leaning upon Him for all our hope,
a hungering and longing that that heart may be filled
by Him which else will be filled with what we have
come to loathe and deplore. We always recognize
this principle in the estimate we make of character,
and venerate him the more who has attained to virtues
through penitence, trial, and self-discipline, rather than
inherited them through an amiable constitution.

Nor let us fail to see another deeply important truth which our subject should teach us. All true excellence must have its beginning in the lowest views of ourselves. How can you expect him to make any efforts for himself who does not know his own wants, who looks complacently upon his present state, and feels that he is doing well enough? It is he who has searched his case to the bottom, who has dared to look into all his deficiencies and sins, and who, laying all open, sees that he is nothing of himself, he it is that will make that prayer, struggle, and rebound by which alone the spirit can rise and soar high. Thus the ladder to an angel's greatness stands on the lowest human abasement, and we cannot place ourselves on that series of steps but by going down and planting our foot on the first round. We need, therefore, a religion which shall humble man's

pride, and bring him to seek for mercy as a sinner. The old theology is right in affirming this. It errs only It is not by pouring contempt taking away the very cause why But it is by showing our abuse

in the way of seeking it. on our nature, for that is we should feel abased.

of our nature, our love of the world, our indifference to spiritual realities, our secret palterings with sin, our preferring, instead of soaring to the high and blessed things for which we were made, our preferring to sink down to the low and poor things of time and sense. Here is enough to make us weep, and to take the attitude of penitent supplication. A religion which does not bring us to these depths of self-abasement, a religion which concerns itself only with superficial moralities, a religion which teaches us to see nothing in sin which we need to loathe, and nothing in ourselves which we can bitterly repent, that religion breathes not the spirit of the Gospel, deals not truly with man, is as false to his deepest wants as it is powerless to realize his highest hopes, inasmuch as it can never nourish higher than commonplace virtues.

One other lesson, my friends, and I have done. Let us doubt whether we are on the right path if we have never been brought, in the sincerity and depths of our soul, to offer the prayer of my text. Not that we should be always mourning over our sins, and sitting in sackcloth and ashes. True religion should doubtless make us feel peaceful, happy, serene. And such will be its fruits if we have built our hopes on a rock. But even then there will be times of serious self-questioning and self-dissatisfaction, when we shall see infirmities, omissions, short-comings, bosom-sins which are ever easily besetting us, and shall feel that we can be nothing to

God, that we have no strength and no health of our own, and that it is on his mercy alone that we can rely. And now what I say is, let us distrust and suspect ourselves, if we are never visited by such moments as these. I am much impressed with the fact, that the more men grow in goodness, and the clearer becomes their spiritual vision, the livelier, also, is their sense of indwelling sin, and they feel that all that they have they owe to God's mercy, for they are nothing of themselves. The case is parallel to what we see in other departments of human inquiry and progress. The new student of any science soon feels that he knows a vast deal upon the subject, and his superficial complacency comes only from the fact that he has never sounded down in its fathomless depths. But as he pursues his investigations, his progress in knowledge is proved by his conviction that he knows less, till the height of human knowledge is to know that we know nothing at all. So is it in the religious life. How many are there whose superficial self-complacency proves that they have seen but little of the heights and depths either of God's truth or of their own nature! We may, be sure that we are not advancing, if we do not often meet with moments when all pride is humbled, when a sense of our ill-desert is lively, and we feel that we know nothing and are nothing in the presence of that Infinite before which we stand in awe. And let us all remember, that if we would build up a temple which shall rise in fair and lofty proportions, with turrets on which shall play the sunshine of God's smile, and with spire losing itself in the clear blue of heaven, we must first go down far below all that can be seen, and have our foundations in the lowest humility and self-abasement.

SERMON II.

BY FRANCIS PARKMAN.

RELIGIOUS SOLICITUDE..

GOOD MASTER, WHAT SHALL I DO THAT I MAY INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE?- Mark x. 17.

AND HE TREMBLING AND ASTONISHED SAID, "LORD, WHAT WILT THOU HAVE ME TO DO?' - Acts ix. 6.

Ir is natural to the humble heart, to the spirit oppressed by a sense of weakness and sin, to seek with earnestness the way to peace. To the sinner, who has wandered far from his God, conscious of ill-desert, and knowing that his only hope is in his Father's mercy, the inquiry of my text is of the deepest interest; and we have the utmost reason for gratitude to God, that in the Gospel of his Son it is so clearly and so graciously answered.

At the same time, the whole history of religion and the history of our race, while they have shown the solicitude with which men have sought acceptance, that they might find mercy with God, show also the perverseness of ingenuity with which they have substituted something of their own devices for true religion; placing it in what it is not, utterly forgetting or not choosing to accept it in what it is. In proportion to the love of the besetting sin, or the cherished evil