superstructure; you lean on the foundation.

And so it is, that I would have you at all times to have no confidence in yourselves, but to rejoice in the Lord Jesus-to fetch from Him all those influences by which you are enabled from one hour to another, to serve God in the Spirit-ever to be intermingling your aspirations with your efforts, your prayers with your practice; striving mightily, yet supplicating constantly; fervent in spirit while not slothful in business: And be assured that it is on the basis of profoundest humility, that the noblest elevations of Christian worth and excellence are reared.

That process by which the prayer of faith and the performance of familiar duty are made thus to reciprocate the one with the other, goeth on among the recesses and the intricacies of experimental religion. It forms the main spring and aliment of that life, which is hid with Christ in God. He who verifies this process in his own heart, realises fellowship with the Father and with the Son. The secret of the Lord is with him; and in the busy chambers of the inner man, there is a joy that the world knoweth not, and a spiritual mechanism at work which the world cannot comprehend. But though they see not the working of the mechanism, they may both see and admire the produce of that working-even as we might have our eye regaled by the beauty of a pattern, though you have not an understanding for the complex machinery by which it is inlaid. Even so it is that the eye of nature,

cannot apprehend what that is which hath wrought the true and the lovely and the honourable on the groundwork of your character-yet each one of these features, and many more, can be discerned by the men who are without, and call forth an applauding testimony from them all. And be it your care, that your light so shine before men, that they, who see nought but mysticism in your orthodoxy, and in your high communions with God, and in your life of faith upon His Son, and in your habitual fellowship with His Spirit-that they, utterly in the dark about the secret principles of your character, may at least be compelled to render an homage to the visible exhibitions of it. It is thus, my brethren, that Christ is magnified in your body. It is thus that His doctrine is adorned; and that your souls become a living epistle, read and acknowledged not merely by your fellow-saints, but read and seen of all men. They cannot understand the high and the hidden walk of godliness. But they can understand your common honesty. They can understand your every-day usefulness. They can understand the courtesy of your manners. They can understand your patience under injuries, and the noble sacrifices that you make in the cause of humanity. They can understand all the duties of that varied relationship, which you hold with your fellow-men. They know the distinction between a good and a bad parent, between a kind and a quarrelsome neighbour, between a dutiful and a disobedient son, between a profitable and a

pernicious member of society. Make it clear to them as day then, that your Christianity which is a religion of faith is also a religion of virtue-that all the fit and graceful moralities of life follow in its train-and that, while it assimilates to the angels who are above, it scatters beauties and blessings innumerable over the face of society in this lower world. Strive thus to recommend to others the gospel which you profess. Strive mightily according to the grace of God that is given to your prayers, and that worketh in you mightily.

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LECTURE LXIV.

ROMANS, viii, 31.

"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

THE apostle, in the utterance of these words, evidently proceeds on the belief that God is upon his side; and it is a belief grounded on certain things which may be found in the preceding context: What shall we then say to these things?' And surely it concerns us to search what the things were, that we too, if possible, may realise the same glorious confidence; and be raised to that highest vantage-ground on which a creature can be exalted, even the vantage-ground of the Divine favour, whereupon he stands secure, amid the shock and the conflict and the hostility of all those subordinate elements which be in the universe-and just because he can count on the greatest Being of the universe as his friend.

In taking a retrospect then of this epistle, with a view to ascertain the footing upon which our apostle rests the assurance of God being for him, we shall find that there are two distinct considerations upon which the assurance turns. The first consideration is that of God's truth in His promise -a consideration which lays hold on those who have

faith, and which lays no hold on those who want it. What first then led the apostle to count upon God as his friend, was faith in God-a faith that counted Him to be faithful-a faith that hung direct upon the promises of God. Of this an example was given by Abraham, and is quoted by Paul, in the preceding argument. The patriarch relied upon God, from the time of his very first communication. He did not wait the experience of God's truth-he believed in it from the outset. He did not ground his confident anticipation of the whole promise being fulfilled, from the fulfilment of one or any part of it. He trusted from the moment of its utterance. He reckoned upon God's friendship, so soon as God had made any overture to him at all. He believed, ere he set out from his native country; and prior to all the subsequent tokens that he obtained of God's faithfulness, in the course of his journeying over distant lands. He believed in Him the first time, and before that he met with Him a second time. The truth of God's whole promise was more unlikely to the eye of nature, before that Abraham had got any part of it made good to him, than after that part of it was verified by an actual accomplishment. But it was at the time of greatest unlikelihood, that his faith made its brightest display, and was most acceptable to God. It was because that against hope he believed in hope-it was because he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief-it was because fully persuaded that what God had promised he was able also to perform-It