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you say that, you simply express the profound and growing conviction of the Church. The Bible itself is on your side so often as you affirm: When God redeemed men by the grace of Christ, He spake not nor commanded them concerning rites and ordinances; but this He commanded, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and walk ye in all the ways I have commanded you, that it may be well with you." It is impossible to deny that such an affirmation is a fair paraphrase of the Prophet's words, a fair and rational application of them to your position. I for one have no wish to deny it. Obedience is better than sacrifice; to do one's duty by one's neighbour is the true ritualism, the best. And those of us who care very little for outward religious forms may be very sure, that, if we are trying to do our duty by our neighbour and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, we are aiming at that pure and undefiled ritualism, and are offering that reasonable service, which God approves and will accept.

But before we go further, let us make quite certain of our ground. Our supreme aim should be to do our duty in our daily life:" but is not Sunday one of our days? are not its duties a part of our duty? Do you reply, "What an absurd question! Of course Sunday is one of the days of our week, and its duties a part, and a very pleasant part, of our duty." The question is not so absurd as it sounds. There are some folk who, when speaking of their duty to God, quietly drop all the week-days out of their thoughts. They assume that God has little to do with their secular life; that what He cares for is the worship of the Sanctuary and, what they call, the Sabbath. But, on the other hand, there are persons who, when they speak of their duty to God, think only or mainly of their duties in the world and on the six

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working-days of the week. mean that they should try to speak the truth, to act honestly, to feel kindly, in the home, in the shop, in the factory or the counting-house. Oddly enough, they drop Sunday and the Church out of their reckoning, or do not keep these clearly before them. Sunday is their day of rest; i.e., the day on which they may relax a little from the hard task of duty and be at ease. The Church is at most a place in which they may be pleasantly instructed or soothed, not a place in which they are to labour and to deny themselves. They do not feel that the House of God has the same kind of claim upon them that the home has or the factory, that its services are just as binding on them as the labours of their daily business. They are often absent from it for reasons which would not keep them from their weekday work they say, "We are bound to go to business; we cannot neglect that," but they do not feel that they are equally bound to wait upon the Lord in His House. The tasks by which they win bread for the body are obligatory upon them; the ordinances by which they nourish the life of the spirit are not obligatory, although, if you put it to them, they frankly admit that the life is more than meat, and the spirit more than the flesh. Inverting the true order, they practically assume that they may neglect the spirit, but not the body; the Church, but not the world; God, but not man. And therefore, my brethren, if you have any of you fallen into this way of thought, you will do well to consider whether you can be doing your duty in your daily life, if you drop one day in seven out of your account, and that the day which God has specially reserved for His service. You will do well to consider whether you can be doing your duty if you neglect any duties which God has laid upon you, and above all if you neglect the very duties by which

your spirits are specially prepared for His eternal service and joy.

Again we must not treat the text unfairly, even that we may justify or excuse ourselves. It is quite fair, as I have said, to affirm that when God redeemed men He said nothing about rites and ordinances, but bade them obey His voice and walk in His ways. It is quite fair to say, therefore, that obedience is and must be better than any observance of forms. But it is not fair to deny, or to forget, that the observance of forms may be a part of obedience. If at any time God has said, and said to you, "Be baptized for the remission of your sins," or, "Do this in remembrance of me," or, "Rest from your labours on my day and worship me in my House" are not these commandments binding on you?

Are you

obeying God's voice if you do not observe these ordinances? Are you walking in all the ways which He commanded you, if you are not walking in these commandments?

I fear, brethren, that the ground on which we stood a while ago is not so solid as it seemed, that it trembles ominously beneath our weight. Religious forms may be transient, changeable, revocable; but, so long as they last, they are binding on us, if at least we know that God has appointed them. To obey God is to be religious; but ritualism, in so far as it expresses His will, is part of our religion. Morality is far above all ordinances; but we have not the true morality so long as we neglect any divine command: for what is our morality but a doing of the Divine Will?

If, then, we neglect public worship, or do not put it on at least as high a level as our other duties: if we are not baptized, or do not come to the Lord's supper, or if we take no part in the distinctive labours of the Church; and if, as a reason for our non-observance of these duties and forms, we plead that we are

trying to do our duty in the world, and that forms are nothing as compared with a good life, we expose ourselves to the reply: "Have you no duty to the Church as well as to the world? How can you be doing your duty, or even trying to do it, when here are duties which you make no effort to discharge? Religious ordinances, Church duties, are part of a good life, since they are imposed upon us, for our good, by the authority of God Himself.

If any one object: "But I don't see the good of them!" the retort is obvious: "Probably God does, or He would not have enjoined them: and are you wiser than God."

If any one should object: "But who is the Lord that I should do as He bids?" he opens a new and larger subject on which we cannot enter now, and need not, since, I suppose, no one of you disputes the Divine authority. You admit that if God has appointed certain religious forms, He has ordained them for your good, that He may teach and comfort and strengthen you so often as you observe them. You admit that the worship of His house, baptism, and the Lord's supper, are such forms, and that they are more or less binding on all who love Him. But nevertheless you may have a feeling that these forms are not of any great moment after all, that it lies very much at your option or your convenience whether you observe them or do not observe them; that your non-observance of them is of no importance so long as you try to do your duty and to live a good life. It is this obscure persuasion, this unavowed feeling, I believe, which is fast emptying our sanctuaries and in every way weakening our churches. Good Christian men, or men who are sincerely endeavouring to be good on the Christian rule, are influenced by it; and under its influence are relaxing their use of the means of grace. On all hands, at least from the Nonconformist

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Churches, we hear the complaint, that those who were wont to be punctual as the hour, are growing irregular and infrequent in their attendance on public worship; that men are so steeped in worldly business, and so wearied by it, that they have neither time nor energy for the service of the Church. This, the non-observance of religious forms by religious persons, is the danger and the sin of the present time. And in great measure probably it springs from the broader and more generous views of truth which have of late found acceptance among us. We have learned to hold that obedience is better than sacrifice, till at last we have come to think there need be no sacrifice in our obedience; that God demands no service of us which entails personal inconvenience or worldly loss. therefore we need to be reminded of the real meaning of one of the first principles of the faith. "Obedience better than sacrifice" is a principle, a fundamental principle of the Faith of Christ. It cuts sheer through hypocrisy and formalism. But the keener the principle, the more deeply we may wound ourselves with it, if we mishandle it. And we are mishandling this principle, if we use it to justify any neglect of any Divine command. We are not doing our duty while we consciously neglect any duty. We are not obeying God's voice so long as we refuse "to hearken and do" in respect to any of His commandments. We are not living so good a life as we might and ought to live, so long as we turn away from any means of grace He offers us.

Religious ordinances, though they are of little worth as compared with spiritual obedience, are nevertheless the most accurate and delicate tests of obedience. Moral commandments carry their own sanction with them. When God says, "Thou shalt not lie, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not murder," we have no doubt

that we ought to listen to His voice: we are quite sure that it will not be well with us if we disobey it. But the sanction and obligation of ordinances is not so obvious. When the Divine Commandment means, "Go to chapel; be baptized; take the supper of the Lord!" even a good man may doubt whether it is essential to his well-being that he should obey. He may think, and think quite sincerely, that it will be better for him to lie-a-bed, or to take a walk, or to talk to his children, than to go to God's house: he may think that baptism would be a bore to him rather than a blessing: and that it would be no real help to him to eat and drink with Christ. And here for him lies the true value of ordinances. Precisely because they do not commend themselves to him as moral laws do, precisely because he does not think them essential to his moral welfare, they are the critical, the crucial, tests of his obedience. God says to Him, "This, and that, will be good for you." Says the man, "I really don't think they will; Í can find something better to do." But if he is really of a Christian spirit, he will soon add, "After all God must know best; and therefore I will take my law from His mouth, and bow my will to His." My brethren, accept the warning. If you have neglected the ordinances of God's House, because you have not seen how you should be the better for observing them, your obedience has been put to the most delicate of all tests, and has failed. You have taken your own way instead of God's, because you did not see that His way was best. So long as you could walk by sight as you followed Him, you were content to keep His paths: but the very moment faith was demanded of you, and you were called to tread a path the end of which you could not discern, your heart failed you, and you refused to trust in God. Retrace your steps. Redeem the opportu

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from unspeakable joy to life-sapping dejection, from invincible power to prostrate weakness, we pass and repass more rapidly than Mother Earth wheels her course from genial brightness and healing warmth to thickening mists and increasing fogs.

Tossed up and down on the billows of these changing April moods, George told the story of his intellectual difficulties; alternating between a feeling of contempt for himself for ever having given them any quarter, and the opposite feeling of the necessity of facing them if he were not to prove himself a coward and a slave. Resolved steadily to master, and not to shirk them, we chatted, hour after hour, about the questions commonly felt by doubting young men, and started by the apostles of scepticism concerning miracles, Biblical history, prophecy, and the like. To state the Personal Will and Almightiness of God was quite enough to show George the possibility of miracles being performed; if any reason at all existed why a good and kind God, the kind and pitiful Father of men, should work them. Such " reason in abundance was found in the teeming sin and sorrow and unintelligible darkness and despair of life. So that the question of miracle became one of evidence merely, i.e., of history. And beginning with Roman history, clearly attested and everywhere admitted, even by the most sceptical, we travelled to the Four Gospels and Epistles, under the guidance of Isaac Taylor's Restoration of Belief, and there found solid and sufficient footing for the largest faith. Next came the "historical difficulties" of the Old Testament, such as the existence of the descendants of Cush, the invasion of Palestine by the five Kings from the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf in the time of Abraham, and the journey through the "Desert." Recent travels and recent history, which had shown a "first Cushite Empire," verified the disputed invasion, and cleared away much of the haze that surrounded the "Wilderness of the Wanderings," effectively dealt with many of these Biblical problems, and at least suggested the probability concerning the remainder that further investigation might also remove them, and that therefore it would be unjust to reject the word of God on their account.

"But," said George, in one of these talks, "Do you think a man should be fully satisfied about everything in the Bible before he gives his assent to Christianity, and makes its precepts the guide of his life, and its promises the solace of his heart."

"Certainly not. The Bible does not come to man as to a critic, who is to analyze and weigh in the scales of his mind, and to the utmost nicety, every grain of living bread it gives him before he eats it. It speaks to him as to a sinner, a lost man, needing the pardon of sin, the help of God, and the hope of eternal life. În a tone of authority, as above all other speakers, as coming from the very presence of God, it addresses men, assuring them that they may have life in the Saviour, whose glory it reveals. It is bread to be eaten by the hungry, water to be drunk by the thirsty, comfort for the mourner, and light for those that sit shivering and cold in the shadow of death. Because you do not know all the ingredients in the healing medicine is it not to be drunk? If some rooms of the King's great palace are closed so that you cannot get in, will you therefore object to go in and sit down with him at his feast. The negro story says that when Sambo's master said he was troubled because he could not understand the eighth of Romans, Sambo cried aloud, "O, Massa, massa, that is right away in the Epistles, you must learn the Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles first." So if a man says he cannot believe the story of Jonah, I should ask him if he could and did believe the story of Christ. Let him take what he can today, and depend upon it God will give him more to-morrow."

"But my friend says there ought to be no difficulties of any sort in a revelation, and asks why it is not so clear that every body can understand it? If it were from a good and loving God it would be."

"Would it now? Do you think it would George?"

"Well, at first I thought surely infinite intelligence can make all things plain; and then I remembered that Christ said to his disciples, I have many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now,' and I imagined it must necessarily be so. There will be things we can't understand in any message the great God sends to such feeble-minded creatures as we are."

"To be sure. Much that a father says to his child is dark and mysterious. The young mind cannot catch the meaning of his words, and has to wait and spell out their significance from experience. So we are in the dark, and do not see at first all that God means; but experience opens our eyes and puts into His words a power and a grace we had not even dreamt of before."

"So that you think we ought to expect difficulties in the Bible."

"Indeed it would have been very sur