else." It is related of the Countess of Huntingdon, that she was brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, through the instrumentality of the single remark of the Lady Margaret Hastings, that "since she had known and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, she had been as happy as an angel." When the Sun of righteousness beams on the soul, sometimes rising like the faint light of the morning, and sometimes bursting upon the benighted mind in meridian splendor, joys visit it that are alternately serene and rapturous, now tranquil, and now unspeakable and full of glory.

The brightest earthly career has its trials, and they are trials which find no relief and no alleviation but from the Divine presence and favor. Here alone is the febrifuge for the burning heart; the pillow for the aching head.

"How soft to lean on Heaven!

To lean on Him on whom archangels lean."

This world forsakes us on the approach of the winter's storm; before the chill blasts of adversity it retires. Not so the religion of the Gospel. Misery in all its forms has peculiar attractions for this message of heavenly mercy. The spirit of the world and the spirit which is of God often meet at the door of human wretchedness; but the former leaves it because the sources of its joy are dried up; the latter enters because there are sources of bitterness, and tears to be wiped away. Such love and pity are found in the Gospel of Christ, and only there, for misery and poverty like ours. Not until this celestial messenger is made welcome, can men be holy, or happy. The voice of reason, the voice of conscience, the voice of God, every cross and disappointment, and trial repeats the call, My son, give me thy heart!" And O that, from that insatiable thirst for happiness so deeply implanted in the soul of man, every one of my readers may respond, My heart, blessed Lord, will I give!

But there is another alternative. "He that is not with me," says the Lord Jesus, "is against me." Those who reject this message of the Christian ministry, do so on their own responsibility, and at their own peril. "If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it." Men who have been distinguished for the success which crowned their labors, have also been distinguished for making hard hearts harder, and blind eyes blinder. There is a reason for this in the nature of their message; for the very truths which are most fitted to interest and impress, when long and perseveringly rejected, only leave the mind more obdurate. This is the way men become ripe for destruction; it is in the midst of scenes of mercy, where they wander as in a desert and parched land, and whence they go at last, where there is not a drop of water to cool their tongue. This is the direful catastrophe. This will be the end of disregarding and rejecting the message of the Christian ministry. As God liveth, this will

be the mournful end of rejecting these messages of heavenly mercy. It is no common responsibility that such men incur. If the smallest talent must be accounted for, what account must they render who all their lifetime have been favored with a preached Gospel, and who have only heard and rejected this gracious message? How bitter the reflections of such a man, as he sees the last hours of human life passing away, and the lamentation is extorted from his bosom, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved!" What a fearful transition will that be from the Christian sanctuary to the bar of God! There will be mourning then, when "many shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God, and they themselves are cast out." Ah, they know not what they do, to whom God has given a faithful ministry, and who reject the great salvation. They are not the atheist, and the infidel, and the immoral only who perish. Large and free as it is, the love of God is no refuge even for the moral and the orthodox, who treat the message of his ministers as they treat their Master, and tread it under their feet. It is the last message. Infinite love makes its greatest effort here. It cannot do more. "There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin."

Nor

When the rich man in the parable lifted up his eyes in hell, and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom, he cried and said, "Father Abraham have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame!" The time will come when the despisers of our message will cry for mercy, whether they ever did before or not. They will cry long and loud; they will lift up their voice in awful distress; but there shall be none to answer. will it be long before that day of calamity shall come. It may be forty years; it may be twenty; it may be ten; it may be five; it may be two; it may not be one. Eternity is nearer than they think of, and that place of torment is as near as eternity. We know not what a day may bring forth. Yesterday is fled upon the eagle wings of time; to-morrow belongs to God and not to man. golden Sabbaths will soon have passed away, and the voice of the living ministry will soon be silent among the silent dead. Could those who die in their sins come back again and live, its message would not be so urgent. But they come not. You call, and they answer not again. You look for them in the visions of the night; but it is all a dream. They appear not to mortal eyes; they speak not to mortal ears. They are not in heaven, but are shut up in hell. Would that the man who rejects the salvation of God could be transported to eternity for an hour, if it were but to witness the agony of those who once occupied a place in God's sanctuary, and whom nothing could induce to fall in with the redemption that is in Christ Jesus! O dreadful doom! not to be described by mortal

These

tongue; yet to be, endured by every mortal man that refuses this offered mercy!

If the writer dwells a moment longer on thoughts like these, it is because they are affecting thoughts to his own mind, as a preacher of the everlasting Gospel. The Christian ministry is God's selected instrumentality in accomplishing his purposes of grace. It is set for the defence of the Gospel, and for the vindication of the Divine government over this fallen world. Eternity alone can disclose the responsibility of preaching this Gospel; eternity alone can disclose the responsibility of rejecting it. Think of a man sitting for ten, or twenty, or forty, or sixty years under the varied influences of an instructive pulpit. What a vast amount of truth has he listened to! How much toil and ingenuity have been expended in order to frame arguments to convince his understanding, to construct appeals that should rouse his conscience, to furnish illustrations that might interest him, and to urge motives that might persuade him to become reconciled to God! How often has he trembled at the rebuke, and wept under the affecting persuasions that would fain have constrained him to become a Christian! Who can measure the responsibility of such a man, even though he may have listened to the meanest pulpit in the land! That pulpit, what will be the testimony, and what his recollections of that pulpit, when the Saviour there made known shall judge the world in righteousness! What a stream of light has poured from it upon many a benighted mind, which, if it had enlightened Sodom and Tyre, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes!

Men who enjoy a faithful Christian ministry know too much of God and his Christ, to consent to go away into everlasting burnings. Better for them to have died from the womb, or as a hidden, untimely birth that had not been, as infants which never saw the light, than to have been dwellers in this world of mercy, and at last make their bed in that lake of fire.

Behold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish! Adore, ye lovers of God and the Gospel of his Son, that by the foolishness of preaching he is pleased to save them that believe!

III.

BECOMING ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN.

BY REV. WILLIAM ADAMS, D. D.

PASTOR OF THE CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BROOME STREET, NEW YORK.

....

"I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."-1 Cor. ix. 22.

Ir there be a passage in any language worthy to be compared, for the nobleness and sublimity of its sentiments, with the vindication which Paul has made of himself in this ninth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, we have not yet been fortunate enough to discover it.

We cannot be insensible to the magnanimous bearing of Aristides "the Just," when defending his pure fame against the jealousy of his great rival Themistocles ; deeply are our sympathies moved when we read of men like Galileo and Columbus, wronged and defrauded by those whom they had benefited, standing forth to repel aspersion, and vindicate their own names and achievements; infected with his own deep pathos are we all, when we read the words with which the Earl of Chatham stirred the British senate in defence of his life, spent in public service, against the attacks of men who could not, or would not, appreciate his motives; but not one of these signal passages in the history of forensic eloquence is equal to the chapter now before us, in which, under the necessity of self-defence, the Apostle to the Gentiles appeals to the principles and conduct of his disinterested and noble life.

He had been falsely accused by false men; who, by misjudging his motives and degrading his official character, sought to impugn and degrade Christianity itself; and the occasion demanded that he should step forth from the modest retirement, in which the conscious uprightness of his motives was left with God, and, by an explanation of his own principles, vindicate the spirit of Christianity as attacked in his person. Nor is that man to be envied, who can read this record of self-sacrificing benevolence, this devotion of oneself to hardship, and solitude, and toil, for the good of others, without the generous glow of enthusiastic admi

ration.

In the one verse which I have selected for my text, we have,

condensed into a few words, the object of his life, and the means by which he sought its attainment; which form of expression may serve to furnish the method to be pursued in the following discourse:

I. THE OBJECT AND END OF HIS LIFE: "That I might by all

means save some."

II. THE MEANS BY WHICH HE SOUGHT TO ACCOMPLISH HIS OBJECT: "I am made all things to all men.'

The object of the Apostle's life was the salvation of his fellowmen. It is plain that he looked at the human race from a particular point of view. He was convinced that they were in danger; and his desire was to rescue them.

There have been a great many ingenious representations of human life. The world has been described under a very great variety of images. Old Pythagoras, when he was asked what he thought of human life, compared it to the Olympic games, where some came to try their fortune for the prizes; some as merchants to exchange their commodities; some to make good cheer and meet their friends; and others, like himself, were simply lookers-on. Epictetus, another of the old philosophers, in a very striking paragraph, which has been confessedly employed by Mrs. Barbauld as the foundation of a very ingenious essay, compared the world to a great mart of commerce, where fortune exposes to our view many and various commodities, which we may procure by purchase or barter. Others have painted life as a voyage-the revolution of the seasons-a war-a racea school-and so on, through the whole range of metaphorical illustration. Far different was the view taken by the great Apostle. To his eye the world was a vast wreck, in danger of being broken up by the waters of a destroying deluge. Mankind were in imminent peril of being drowned in perdition; and he was running from point to point, making incredible exertions, if by all means he might save some. In the language employed by him at other times, the image, but not the idea, is somewhat varied. stead of a drifting wreck, the world was as a house on fire, and its inmates in danger of being consumed in everlasting burnings. He shouts to the sleepers; he wakes them out of their slumbers; he rushes to the rescue, "pulling them out of the fire," that by all means he might save some. It is evident that he was thoroughly convinced of the fact that all mankind are in danger of eternal ruin. He cherishes no notion akin to the universal salvation of

all his race. To him they do not appear to be floating quietly and securely towards a state of indiscriminate happiness. The sharp cry from his lips--If by all means I might save some-implies what he felt as to the exposure of all. He was like the wrecker pacing the shore, devising now this means, and