when its divisions, and hatreds, and falsehoods are bringing back the darkness and chaos out of which it arose.

Many other signs,' he says in his Gospel, truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name.' Thus he defines the office and work of an Evangelist, the end of all Scripture; not to fix our thoughts upon the letters of a book, but to direct us to that Son who died, and rose, and liveth for evermore.

'That which was from the beginning,' so he writes in his Epistle, 'that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us ;) that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. . . . This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sins. There is the theology, there is the morality of an Apostle; a theology and a morality, as I think, fresh and young for all times, striking at the root of our denials and our self-deceptions, shewing us why we cannot believe in ourselves, or our notions, and theories; shewing us in whom we may believe, who is

able to deliver us from all our darkness and enmities who is able to bring us into His perfect light and love.

And if we pass from the Gospel and the Epistle to that book which is rightly called the Revelation, or unveiling of Jesus Christ, we find the old Apostle, the last of the Apostles, telling of Him which is, and which was, and which is to come; of the seven spirits before His throne; of Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first begotten from the dead, the Prince of all the kings of the earth. He is telling us of the kingdom under which we are living, of the Name with which we are sealed. He looks back to the past, claiming his own kinsmen after the flesh, his own beloved nation of Israel, as heirs of promises which must be fulfilled. He looks onward to the future, claiming all nations as intended to walk in the divine light, to bring their treasures into the divine city. In that city may be found the names not of one but of all the Apostles. For all testified of the truth which St. Peter declared in express words, Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner-stone, elect, and precious: and he that believeth on Hy shall not be confounded.

they fancied was governing them? One who regarded the rich with affection; who had bestowed great advantages upon them; who had given them an earnest here of what He might do for them hereafter. It was most natural for poor men to put this interpretation upon that which they saw, and that which they felt. It was difficult for them to find any other interpretation. It was not more difficult for the people who dwelt about the coasts of Tyre and Sidon than for the people who dwell in the courts and alleys of London. The difficulty is the same precisely in kind. The degree of it must be greater on some accounts for the dwellers in a crowded modern city than for those who breathed the fresh air of Galilee. The difficulty was not diminished for the latter (I mean for the Galileans) by anything which they heard from their religious teachers. It was enormously increased. God was said to demand of these poor people religious services which they could not render; an amount of knowledge about His law which they could not possess. His prizes and blessings here and hereafter were said to be contingent upon their performing these servicesupon their having that knowledge. Whichever way they turned to their present condition-to the forefathers to whose errors or sins they must in great part attribute that condition-to the future, in which they must expect the full fruit of the misery and evil into which they had fallen-all looked equally dark and hopeless.

Startling indeed, then, were the tidings, Yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.' Most startling, when they were translated into these, 'You have a Father in "Heaven who is seeking after you, watching over you, 'whom you may trust entirely. He ruled over your

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'forefathers. He promised that he would shew forth 'his dominion fully and perfectly in the generations to 6 come. I am come to tell you of Him; to tell you how He rules over you, and how you may be in very deed His subjects. I am come that you and your children may be citizens in God's own city; that the Lord God 'Himself may reign over you.' I cannot render the phrase into any equivalents that are simpler, more obvious, than these. And if they were true, must they not have been true for all that crowd, for every thief and harlot in it? Was not this the very message of John, delivered by Him who could not only call to repentance but give repentance?

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(2) 'Yes,' it may be answered-'That might be 'so, if the language only declared to the poor that there was a Heavenly Father who cared for them no less 'than He cared for the rich; but the sentences which 'follow give them a positive advantage: it would appear as if the blessing on the poor involved a " curse on the rich. What other force can you 'put on such sentences as these? "Blessed are ye that 'hunger now, for ye shall be filled. weep now, for ye shall laugh. But woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation. 'unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto 'you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep."

Blessed are ye that

Woe

Language so explicit as this cannot be evaded. And I hold it is greatly for the interest of all of us who are leading easy and comfortable lives in the world, that it should not be evaded. If any amount of riches, greater or smaller, does give us consolation, it is well for us to understand that there is a woe upon those riches. They were not meant to give consolation; we were not meant to find it in them.

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LECTURE X.

THE SUBJECTS AND LAWS OF THE KINGDOM.

And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.-ST. LUKE vi. 20.

So begins a discourse which has often been said to contain a code of very high morality for those who forsake the low level of the crowd, and aim at a specially elevated standard of excellence. The previous sentence explains to whom the discourse was addressed. 'And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the sea-coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases.' Those were the people who heard Christ say: Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.'

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(1) We were wont to mitigate the force of this sentence by referring to the one in St. Matthew's Gospel, which most resembles it. For 'poor' we say, the other Evangelist gives us 'poor in spirit.' Is not that the sense in which we must understand the words. here? I am most thankful for the expression in St. Matthew, and am quite willing to use it for the illustration of the discourse in which it occurs. We may find it a great help hereafter in understanding