ing example-how hard for them to keep the mind in communion with God; and, whilst compassed with earthly influences, not to inhale them, but, through the golden tube of prayer, to draw down the air of heaven amidst that tainted atmosphere which would otherwise soon quench the living lamp of godliness within the soul!

My young friends, dare to be singular—not in affectation, but in righteousness. Be assured that, if only you are consistent, the world will respect even whilst it reproaches you; and your employers, though they may not be able to appreciate your motives, will ultimately confide in your character; yea, and those who at first made you the butt of their ridicule, will by and by say within themselves, "May our souls be with theirs when we have to give our account to our Judge!"

Think not that to cast out the spirit of the world is to create a void within-to crush your energies, and dry up your sympathies; far from it. Christ does not simply dislodge, He displaces the world. If he expel the love of it from our hearts, it is by substituting the love of Himself; if He wean us from glittering clay, it is by holding forth to us "an enduring substance;" if He draw our affections from this land of shadows and changes and decoys, it is by the mighty attraction of "a kingdom that cannot be moved." Be ready

then to give up all for Christ, and you will find all in Christ. Eat abundantly of the children's bread, and you will disrelish the husks of earth. Look much at the bright battlements of "the city of habitation ;" and all here will look faded and dim.

God Almighty give you grace to use this world as not abusing it; to improve it as the scene of duty, but not to love it as a place of rest! It is at best a verdant quagmire-build upon it, and you will be engulfed; tread lightly over it, and you will escape its pollution!

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LECTURE XI.

NEHEMIAH'S JEALOUSY FOR THE HONOUR OF GOD.

"Ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies?"-NEH. v. 9.

THERE was much good sense and Christian wisdom in the reply which was once given to a dignitary of our church by a simple rural pastor. The latter had said to the former, whilst remonstrating with him on account of some unwise step that he was about to take, "If you act so, what will the people say?" To which the other replied with disdain, "Do you care what the people say?" The rejoinder of the plain man was, "I care as little as any man what the people say; but I care a great deal what the people have a right to say." How just the distinction! Human opinion ought to have no weight with us when it contravenes duty; but it ought to weigh much

with us when we incur its censure by the violation of duty. It does not speak well for a man that he is regardless, though it would have been no less wrong if he had made an idol, of his reputation. Our own name is to be of little estimation in our mind, except as it may affect the name of our Master. If He be wounded through us, then indeed we ought to feel the smart; if we bring reproach on that holy name by which we are called, then indeed we ought to be confounded. It is always of the nature of love and loyalty, to be sensitive in relation to the fame of their object. The British soldier who is true to his country, his queen, and his captain, cannot be more keenly stung than by hearing them reviled-the more so if in anywise his own conduct has occasioned the reproach. And is the soldier of the cross to be less alive to the honour of the Captain of his salvation, who redeemed him with His blood? Is he to feel less pierced when Jesus is wounded in the house of his friends?

The noble man-ennobled through the grace of God-whose character we are illustrating for your edification, was not wanting in this distinctive feature of the host of God's elect. He was not only valiant in fighting the good fight of faithbraving every foe, and weathering every hardship, in the service of his God-but he was tremblingly

alive to any dishonour brought upon Him whom he served, and above all, when brought upon Him by those who bore His name, and were identified with His truth. When therefore, with just indignation, he reprehended the usurious and oppressive conduct of the richer Jews towards their poorer brethren, He not only appealed to their sense of justice, but he still more cuttingly appealed to them on the ground of the disrepute into which they brought the holy name of the God of Israel-giving occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. "Ought ye not," he exclaimed, "to walk in the fear of God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies?" Jealousy, therefore, for the honour of God in the midst of a wicked world, is the subject for our instruction this evening-that jealousy burning in the heart and manifesting itself in the conversation of those who are not only called upon to witness for God in the household, the social circle, the secluded walk, but who are bound to uphold His cause and vindicate His truth in the mart, the thoroughfare, the thronged assembly. May His Spirit be with us while we wait upon His word!

God has a people in the world. He has never failed to have a little flock-a ransomed, reconciled, renovated few, who, in the language of the second lesson for this evening's service, have been “called