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them left it clear, untarnished, and sharply cut in Him.

Therefore, because Jesus Christ has come, our Brother, "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh," made like unto us, and in our likeness presenting to us the very image of God and eradiation of His light, therefore no defacement that it is possible for men or devils to make on this poor humanity of ours need be irrevocable and final. All the stains may be blotted out, all the usurping superscriptions may be removed and the original imprint restored. The dints may be elevated, the bulges may be lowered, the tarnish and the rust may be rubbed off, and, fairer than before, the likeness of God may be stamped on every one of us, 'after the image of Him that created us," if only we will turn ourselves to that dear Lord, and cast our souls upon Him. Christ hath become. like us that we might become like Him, and therein be partakers of the Divine nature. "We all, reflecting as a glass does the glory of the Lord, may be changed into the same image, from glory to glory."

Nor do the possibilities stop there, for we look forward to a time when, if I might pursue the metaphor of my text, the coinage shall be called in and reminted, in new forms of nobleness and of likeness. We have before us this great prospect, that

we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is"; and in all the glories of that heaven we shall partake, for all that is Christ's is ours, and we that "have borne the image of the earthly shall also bear the image of the heavenly."

I come to you, then, with this old question : "Whose image and superscription hath it?" and the

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old exhortation founded thereupon: "Render therefore to God the thing that is God's"; and yield yourselves to Him. Another question I would ask, and pray that you may lay it to heart, "To what purpose is this waste?" What are you doing with the silver penny of your own soul?" "Wherefore do ye spend it for that which is not bread?" Give yourselves to God; trust yourselves to the Christ who is like you, and like Him. And, resting upon His great love, you will be saved from the prostitution of capacities, and the vain attempts to satisfy your souls with the husks of earth; and whilst you remain here will be made partakers of Christ's life, and growingly of His likeness, and, when you remove yonder, your body, soul, and spirit will be conformed to His image, and transformed into the likeness of His glory, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself."

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VIII.

How to Work the Work of God.

"THEN said they unto Him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent."-JOHN vi. 28, 29.

HE feeding of the five thousand was the most "popular" of Christ's miracles. The evangelist tells us, with something between a smile and a sigh, that

"when the people saw it, they said, This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world," and they were so delighted with Him, and with it, that they wanted to get up an insurrection on the spot, and make a King of Him. I wonder if there are any of that sort of people left. If two men were to come into Manchester to-morrow morning, and one of them were to offer material good, and the other wisdom and peace of heart, which of them, do you think, would have the larger following? We need not cast a stone at the unblushing, frank admiration that these men had for a Prophet who could feed them, for that is exactly the sort of prophet that a great number of Englishmen would like best, if they spoke out.

So Jesus Christ had to escape from the inconvenient enthusiasm of these mistaken admirers of His; and they followed Him in their eagerness, but were met with words which lifted them into another region and damped their zeal. He tried to turn away their thoughts from the miracle to a far loftier gift. He contrasted the trouble which they willingly took in order to get a meal with their indifference as to obtaining the true bread from heaven, and He bade them work for it just as they had shown themselves ready to work for the other.

They put to Him this question of my text, so strangely blending, as it does, right and wrong, "You have bid us work; tell us how to work? What must we do that we may work the works of God?" Christ answers, in words that illuminate their confusions, and clear the whole matter, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent."

I.-Faith, then, is a work.

You know that the commonplace of evangelical teaching opposes faith to works; and the opposition is perfectly correct, if it be rightly understood. But I have a strong impression that a great deal of our preaching goes clean over the heads of our hearers, because we take for granted, and they fancy, that they understand the meaning of terms because the terms themselves are so familiar. And I believe that many people go to churches and chapels all their lives long, and hear this doctrine dinned into them, that they are to be saved by faith, and not by works, and yet never have a definite understanding of what it all

means.

So let me just for a moment try to clear up the

terms of this apparently paradoxical statement, faith is work. What do we mean by faith? What do you mean by saying that you have faith in your friend, in your wife, in your husband, in your guide? You simply mean, and we mean, that you trust the person, grasping him by the act of trust. On trust the whole fabric of human society depends, as well as, in another aspect of the same expression, does the whole fabric of Manchester commerce. Faith, confidence, the leaning of myself on one discerned to be true, trusty, strong, sufficient for the purpose in hand, whatever it may be that, and nothing more mysterious, nothing further away from daily life and the common emotions which knit us to one another, is, as I take it, what the New Testament means when it insists upon faith.

Ah! we all exercise it. We put it forth on certain low levels and directions. "The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her," is, I have no doubt, the short summary of the happy lives of many in this place now. Have you none of that confidence to spare for God? Is it all meant to be poured out upon weak, fallible, changeful creatures like ourselves, and none of it to rise to the One in whom absolute confidence may eternally be fixed?

But then, of course, as we may see by the exercise of the same emotion in regard to one another, the under side of this confidence in God or Christ is diffidence of myself. There is no real exercise of confidence which does not involve, as an essential part of itself, the going out from myself in order that I may lay all the weight and responsibility of the matter in hand upon him in whom I trust. And so Christian faith is

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