tendencies, as to offer from one end to the other of it one unvaried expanse of earthliness.

We therefore do wrong in laying such a weight of discouragement on the labourers who produce-and throwing the mantle of our protection and kindness only over the labourers who prune. And what, it may be asked, are the ingredients of mightiest effect in the character and talents of a productive labourer? They are not his scholarship, and not his critical sagacity of discernment into the obscurities of Scripture, and not his searching or satirical insight among the mysteries of the human constitution. With these he may be helped to estimate the Christianity that has been formed, and to lop off its unseemly excrescences, but with these alone he will never positively rear on the foundation of nature the edifice itself. This requires another set of qualifications which may or may not exist along with that artificial learning to which we trust an adequate homage has been already rendered by us.

We have already done homage to the importance of human learning on this matter. It acts as a fly to regulate the operation, but it is not the power which gives impulse to the operation. For the putting forth of this power we must look to men who bear upon their own hearts the impress of Christianity, whether they are with or without a very high and artificial scholarship. We must look to those who have the Spirit themselves, and who have power in their intercessions with God, and prevail so as to obtain the Spirit for others. We must look to those on whom the simple essentials of the Bible have made their practical impression, and who through the very process of enlightening which they have experienced in their own souls, are able to reflect that process back again on the souls of those in whose behalf they are labouring. And we repeat it, that in both of our established Churches there is a high-toned contempt, not for that agency which can learnedly demonstrate the characters of the Bible, or cast a shrewd and intellectual regard on the impression that has been made by it, but for that agency which takes up the Bible and actually makes the impressionfor that unlettered Methodism which in England has wrought

its miracles, not of imaginary but of substantial grace upon the people, for that Sabbath teaching which, in the hands of lay Christians, promised fair in our own country to be a mighty instrument for reclaiming the population of our cities from the habits of profaneness and profligacy into which they have wandered. There is a disposition on the part of official and formally constituted ecclesiastics to regard such men as the quacks or empirics of theology, who have not had the benefit of their finished education, who belong not to the regular faculty, and of whom therefore it may be feared that they are the bearers of deleterious poison which acts with mischievous effect on the moral and intellectual health of the great mass of the peasantry-those ready dupes of imposture whether in divinity or in medicine. They forget that there is not a perfect resemblance between these two professions, that while in the one human science works the whole practical effect, in the other human science works none of it-that they are very plain doctrines of the Word which are as accessible to the mind of a peasant as of a philosopher, urged home with efficacy by God's Spirit-that Spirit which is surely as ready to be given to the ministrations of humble piety as of accomplished learning, seeing that God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble-that it is thus that Christians are actually made and multiplied in our land. And thus we fear that in the contempt with which in both our Establishments all the activities of religious zeal are now-a-days regarded-in the intolerance which they feel towards our more ardent and painstaking operatives in the cause, the Churches of both countries, while they retain the literary accomplishment which has so long adorned them, may wither into a kind of barren and useless inefficiency as to the great practical purposes for which they were ordained. And that mighty work of agency, which if they were each to employ within their own bosom, might be turned to so mighty an account in the work of converting and moralizing our people, may either be discouraged into apathy or driven beyond the pale of the Establishment,-may transfer to others the whole glory of extending and keeping alive the Christianity of our nation.

SERMON XXVII.

[PREACHED at Glasgow, in June 1817.]

COLOSSIANS IV. 1.

"Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."

It is very observable of Christianity, that while at one time it equalizes all the various ranks and orders of life, at another it presses the performance of such duties, and the practice of such submissions upon the lower orders, as would seem to recognise a wider distinction between one man and his fellow than was ever contended for by the most grovelling minions of despotism. It tells us of the essential equality of all men. It is ever coming into contact with the most striking and important points of this equality. It, with an intrepid disregard of all the power and of all the grandeur of this world, delivers such doctrines as are most humiliating to the pride of the wealthy, and as are most elevating to the hopes and most sustaining to the dignity of the poor. This is a distinction which it makes little account of-when employed on those commanding generalities of the species, which form the great theme of the revelation from God to the world. And whether it adverts to the birth of man or to his dissolution-to the state of nakedness in which he came into the world, or to the state of nakedness in which we go out of it-to the corruption of the body after

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death, or its resurrection to the judgment-seat-to the common relationship of all with our Lawgiver, or the common need and dependence of all upon one Saviour-in a word, whether it adverts to the infirmities of our present condition, or to our capacities for the bliss and the immortality of another-in all these cases does it overlook the varieties of rank and of fortune, and viewing the whole brotherhood of mankind as the members of one common family, does it speak the same language to all, and hold out to all the same offers and the same invitations and the same injunctions.

But one striking attribute of the Christian revelation is, that it leaves no one condition of humanity unprovided for. It not merely provides a rule and a doctrine for man in the general, but it has also its rules and its doctrines for all the leading specialities of office and of station which occur in society. And when, in particular, it condescends upon the duties of a servant, which it repeatedly does, one were apt to think that it assigns him to such a depth of humiliation as to inflict a positive outrage on the rights of our common nature. I am not adverting to the duty of not purloining-for this is not an apposite exemplification of the remark-this duty forming only part of a fair and equal interchange of obligation between the parties. But what are we to think of servants being enjoined to obey their masters in all things, and instead of doing so in the spirit of a grumbling reluctance, to do it heartily and cheerfully, and of good-will? What are we to think of servants, subject as they are to the outbreaking of the most unmerited and ungenerous abuse from their masters, being called upon not to answer again? Nay, what are we to think of the passive and the peaceful demeanour they are called upon to observe, and that not merely when they suffer, but when they suffer wrongfully?— of their being told that it is not enough that they take it patiently when they are buffeted for their faults, but that they should take it patiently even when they do well and are buffeted? Oh! how after the burden of such an indignity as this, can the condition of a servant be redeemed from the imputation of being indeed the most disgracefully ignoble that any

son or daughter of humanity can fill! What security is there for the protection and the privilege of this numerous class of society? and what remaineth either to exalt their office, or to sustain the spirit of its occupier, if it shall thus be thrown open and defenceless to the caprices of every petty tyrant, and no resistance be allowed to the wantonness and the wilfulness of his manifold provocations?

And yet, my brethren, the spirit of a servant never reacheth to a truer or more noble elevation than when-keeping down the tendencies of nature in submission to the will of Christ-he maintains an uncomplaining patience under all the wrongs and all the severities which are inflicted upon him-and when instead of resisting any insult or any aggravation he may meet with, he offers it up in silence unto the Lord. He never stands upon higher ground than when this is his conduct and these are the principles upon which he rests it. He never so strikingly puts forth the high attitude of a Being who is immortal, and who knows his immortality, as when, upon his path being crossed by injury, he mildly forbears all anger, and resolutely bridling the expression of it, quietly commits his judgment unto God. His mind is never so filled with sublime anticipations, nor do the movements of his inner man ever betoken so much of the true sense and soul of dignity, as when, looking up to the Lord Jesus Christ as his master, and looking forward to the reward of the inheritance, and fired with the ambition of adorning the doctrine of the Saviour in all things, and having the Spirit of glory and of God resting on him, he can move his duteous and unruffled way amid the injustice of a master's exactions, or the still more galling injustice of a master's unmerited reproaches and unmerited frowns. The long-suffering of a Christian servant may in these circumstances look a tame and a pusillanimous thing to those who look to it with this world's eyes, and pass their judgment on it upon the world's principles; but I am quite sure, that in the high estimate of eternity, a servant never makes a greater exhibition of character, or reaches to a nearer resemblance of the Godhead Himself, than when he comes off a conqueror from such a trial of the charity that endureth-and