our consciences which responds to each of these arguments-that which rebels against each. And again, I think it is the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven which vindicates the truth of both, and removes the confusion which is mingled with both.

The Gospel not only asserts in terms, but makes us feel practically, the truth of the difference between mere decrees which may be suitable for one time, unsuitable for another, and the eternal principles which belong to the nature of God and His relations with man. The distinction of the moral and the positive is brought out with a fulness and practical strength in the New Testament which the mere verbal divisions of schoolmen, however useful, cannot approach.

But an institution may be a discovery of the nature of God, a discovery of His permanent relation to man, even more than any precept can be. I have tried to shew you that the institution of the day of rest and of the days of work is such a discovery. The law against murder reveals the care of God for life; the law against adultery reveals the care of God for the marriage bond. We perceive the morality of these laws in the benefit which they confer on men, in the mischief which comes from the violation of them. But when Christ draws forth their meaning, their essential morality, it is found that they point to a likeness in loving-kindness, in purity of heart, between the child on earth and the Father in Heaven. This likeness is set forth in the institution which the fourth commandment speaks of. It has, therefore, besides the practical benefits which are its test, as they are the test of the other commandments, an inward moral significance. That is expressed in the reason given for the Sabbath. And the failure to perceive that moral significance was the cause of all the Pharisaical

scrupulosity-all the Pharisaical cruelty. We need not, then, divide the commandments, or set up our judgments of their respective value, in order to maintain this fundamental distinction of the positive and the moral. We shall realise it in the effort to keep We shall find that when we forget it we do not keep them. We substitute our own maxims for them. We subvert them.

(3) The last remark leads me to notice another con'flict of opinions by which many are perplexed. 'You 'cannot refer to the Ten Commandments,' it is said on one side, as the authority for your Sabbath. If you 'adhere to them you must follow them strictly. But 'you keep the first day, not the seventh. For that 'change you must urge some Church or State authority, 'or some long custom. Practically, therefore, that 'Church or State authority, or that long custom, is 'the warrant for the day, not the words spoken on 'Sinai.' It is said in answer, 'The principle of the 'institution is best preserved by the commemoration ' of the day on which Christ rose. Therefore we may 'claim for that day all the sacredness which belonged 'to the other day. We may learn the conduct which is 'fitting on the first day from the conduct which was 'fitting on the seventh.'

I recognise a justice-and I think the consciences of Englishmen generally recognise a justice-in these opposing statements. And I seek the reconciliation of them where I sought the reconciliation of the others. If the Law was leading on to a Kingdom of God—if in that only is the fulfilment of the Law-we may expect to find some sign of the transition from one to the other; some witness of an imperfection in that which was awaiting the full discovery of its own meaning. We have such a sign in the change of this

day. This change has affected the order of life in the most civilised nations of the globe. You cannot account for it by any words of Apostles, by any regulations of Emperors, by any votes of Councils. You are obliged to give these a force which they do not possess; to put a violent strain upon sentences or hints of sentences; after all, to assume a divine purpose as indicated or implied in them which must have given them their efficiency. If you believed in a Kingdom of God-if you thought that the New Testament was the declaration of such a Kingdomyou would have no difficulty in saying, 'I confess here 'the divine government working in the course of human 'life and history, as it works in the course of Nature, 'silently, unobtrusively, through agents known or 'unknown; but accomplishing its purpose, making it 'manifest in due time, fashioning human wills by no 'sudden effort into conformity with it.'

And therefore I entirely accord with those who plead the reason and principle of the fourth commandment as explaining the transgression of its letter. I see in that fact, as they do, the clearest witness of its divine origin, and of its divine preservation. But then if they take up that ground, I must ask them to maintain it consistently. Having once appealed to the reason of the commandment, they must not fall back upon the notion that it is the arbitrary institution of an arbitrary Being who commands without a reason, and would have us obey without a reason. I cannot appeal to the New Testament as a justification of the first day without accepting all the lessons and warnings of the New Testament respecting the seventh day. Those lessons and warnings are written with sunbeams on its pages. They cannot belong to one time only they;

must be meant for all times. They cannot furnish us with an excuse for casting stones at the Pharisees, or judging the Pharisees. They must strike at Pharisaic temper, which is our temptation as much as it was the temptation of those who lived under the old covenant. Close to the real Sabbath, the divine Sabbath which carries a message to menservants and maidservants of the watchfulness of their Father in Heaven over them, of His desire that they should enter into the rest of which His creation speaks, and should take their places as free sons and daughters in His household-lies the spurious Sabbath, which speaks not of a Father but of an oppressor, which shuts out the calmness and beauty of the creation, which substitutes the condition of the slave for that of the adopted child. Beside that Sabbath of which the Son of Man is the Lord, which testifies of His life-giving acts for His suffering brethren, lies the inhuman Sabbath of the rulers of the synagogue-the Sabbath which leads men to regard the six days as the blessed days, because they are not God's days. Yes; every good gift of the good God is dogged by some counterfeit, often undistinguishable from it in its outward shape; eternally opposed to it in its inward spirit. No man has a right to say to his brother, 'Thou art keeping the evil Sabbath, and not the good.'

Every one may say, and ought to say, 'Son of 'Man, Lord of the Sabbath, teach me to choose the 'good and to hate the evil; to delight in the one which 'will bind me more closely to Thee and to Thy Father, 'and to those whose nature Thou hast taken. Teach

me to eschew the one which led men of my flesh and 'blood to trample on Thy flock, to deny Thy Father, to plot Thy death.'

LECTURE IX.

THE KING CHOOSING HIS MINISTERS.

And when it was day he called unto him his disciples; and out of them he chose twelve, whom also he named Apostles.—ST. LUKE vi. 13.

WE are keeping to-day the festival of him whom we call the last of the Apostles. The passage at which we have arrived in St. Luke concerns the calling of the twelve Apostles. I shall not, therefore, interrupt the order of my discourses that I may speak of St. John. We may discover what he was by considering what the function of an Apostle was. His words and acts may in turn be the greatest helps in explaining that function to us.

(1) The words, 'when it was day,' recall the preceding verse: 'It came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.' I have spoken already of the prayers of Christ in connection with His works. When the work most expressed His authority, when the healing act was preceded by an 'I will,' He was still renouncing all independence. Every prayer is a renunciation of independence. Every prayer says, 'We can do nothing without Thee.' As His As His prayers were the essentially true prayers, they must have had

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