in it that never can die-a light that never shall be extinguished -a glory that shall never become dim. Have you ever prayed this prayer, not the least precious that man can offer, "O Lord, give me thy Holy Spirit!" I cannot be satisfied with asking for faith, grace, or repentance; I must have the Author of them all. It would be blasphemy, were it not truth, when I say that the believer's heart is the fane - the very temple, the chosen dwelling-place, the royal palace of the Holy Spirit of truth. Seek that Holy Spirit-look not to your baptism, nor to your Church, nor to any ceremony; look above them all, and beyond them all, and say, "O God, give me thy Holy Spirit, and give it me for Christ's sake." Can he refuse? He cannot. "If ye, fathers, being evil," with all your imperfections, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give his Holy Spirit unto them that ask him?" In order to raise your love to its greatest height, study God's love in Christ. Think of God as a giver, not as a judge-as giving, never as demanding; always think of him as loving, never as condemning; hear perpetually ringing, like a sweet sound, in the very depths. of your soul, "God so loved the world, that he gave his onlybegotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Think of that blessed Saviour who crossed a chasm that no angel's wing can fly over, and waded through a sea of sorrow that no human plumb-line can fathom, and descended to an ignominy and shame that even our imagination cannot realise, for no object and for no end but that man, with the weapons of rebellion in his hand, and the feelings of hatred in his heart, might be pardoned — reclaimed

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To obtain this love, do not think so much of the love that you feel within to Christ, but rather of the love that Christ feels to you. The way for you to increase your love to Christ, is to think very little about what you have attained, but very much of the love wherewith Christ has loved you. Did I wish, for instance, to kindle in my heart revenge, and hatred, and ill-will against some particular person, I would not go into my study and say, "Now I am determined to be revenged on that person, and I will therefore try by every means to blow up the coal of revenge

within me;" for I never should succeed by any such inner introspection of my heart, in raising within it a feeling of revenge. What should I do then? I would think of the wrong that person had done me,—of the crime he had perpetrated,—of the evil he had inflicted on me,- of the ill words he had spoken about me,— and, without thinking of anything within me, but only of the outward evil that he had done to me, I should quickly feel, if capable of such passions, revenge burning within my heart, till it blazed into a flame. And so if there were any person I wished to love me, and I were to say to that person, "You shall love me," he would not do it; if I should say, "I will give you 10,000l. to-morrow, if you will love me," he would tell me, "Love is not a marketable article;" or if I were to say to him, "I will inflict upon you imprisonment, torture, and death, if you do not love me," that person would say, "I may be silent about you, but no torture that you can apply can make love grow in my heart, and no reward that you can offer can create affection." What then must I do? I would go and make some great sacrifice for that person. Were it a mother, and were her child to fall into the roaring cataract, and the shrieks of her agonized affection to call me to the place, I would, at the risk of my life, plunge into the stream, and seize the perishing babe, and bring it safe to shore, and place it in its mother's bosom, and then I would say, "I have commanded you to love me, and you would not; I have threatened, and you would not; I have promised, and you would not; do you love me now?" her answer would be, "I cannot but love one who has showed such love and devotedness to me." And so we love Christ; not because he commands us, not because he threatens us, and not because he promises, but "we love him because he first loved us." Thus, then, think more of Christ's love to you, and less of your love to him; and if your first love has lost its fervour, it will be restored if it has lost its vigour, it will be strengthened, and if it have not all the passion that it had, it will have the fixed and riveted principle prepared for all sacrifices that may occur in the providence of God.

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LECTURE VII

THE DIVINE PRESCRIPTION.

"Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate."—REV. ii. 5, 6.

In my first discourse I directed your attention to the eulogium pronounced upon the Church of Ephesus, as it is related in the second verse of this chapter. I showed you, first, Christ singling out the excellencies of a Church before he states and condemns her sins, in order that the eulogium pronounced upon what is good may thus be made the vehicle by which he will convey, not less pointedly, but with less obstruction, the verdict of condemnation upon the evil. Man's plan is to pounce upon the evil, as wasps pounce upon over-ripe fruit, and then barely to admit the good. God's plan is to pronounce upon the good, and give all the credit that can be given to it; but in faithful words, and yet with an affectionate spirit, to reprove and denounce the evil. So our Lord tells this Church, "I know thy works;" my omniscient eye has seen them all. How delightful is this thought, that the cup of cold water given by the trembling hand of a believer, and the rich dowry that is cast into the Christian treasury by a king, are equally seen and accurately appreciated by Him who searches. the hearts and tries the reins of the children of men. And "I know thy labour and thy patience," and thy faithfulness, "how thou canst not bear them which are evil," and also thy protestantism, "how thou hast tried them," by the law and by the testimony, "which say they are apostles," assume to be apostles, "and are not, and hast found them liars." "I have known," says, "thou hast borne much reproach"-so must Christians

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still, in proportion to their faithfulness and protestantism-" and hast had patience." "Let patience have her perfect work;" and "thy labour," he says, has been single-eyed, disinterested, beautiful, holy; for thou hast laboured not for thine own éclat, aggrandizement, or renown, but "for my name's sake;" and your labour, too, has been seconded, for thou hast not only laboured, and laboured for my name's sake, but thou hast not fainted. So beautiful and glowing is the commendation pronounced upon the Church at Ephesus! And then with what exquisite delicacywith what Christian courtesy, if you will allow the expression, is the condemnation introduced! Never is rebuke so poignant as when it is pronounced by the lips of love; never does a true Christian feel his sin to be so sinful, as when it is pointed out by him who has washed him in his own blood, and made him a priest and a king unto his God. "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee;" and what is that somewhat? "Because thou hast left thy first love."

This was my subject last Lord's-day evening. I showed you what was the evidence of a Christian departing from his first love; less delight in the Bible, less delight in prayer, less care about truth; the idea that he that persecutes it may be a good Protestant, and he that denies it a good evangelical minister; and that every man will be saved, believe what he likes, provided he is sincere. Whenever a Christian is on the inclined plane, and beginning to go downwards from the warm sun of true love, you will see that one of his first steps is indifference to the essential and vital importance of evangelical and scriptural truth. I then said, that the next evidence of this declining love was, what is just the besetting sin of all you who are not decided in this congregation, trying to balance Christianity and the world; having a seat in the church and a box in the playhouse-a favourite actor in the one, and a delightful preacher in the other determined that each shall do his best in his place, but that neither shall dare uncharitably to interfere with the other; endeavouring most carefully so to balance your conformity to the world with the peace of your conscience, that you shall keep the one shielded from compunction, and yet cherish, love, and delight in the other. Be on your guard. I believe in the perseverance of saints; but

that does not prevent me from stating broadly and distinctly, that when these symptoms begin to develop themselves, they are the signs of a fading, a departing gospel, a dying soul.

Let me now turn your attention to the prescription. We have seen, first, the health in the shape of commendation; we have seen, next, the disease and its symptoms. Let us now regard the prescription for its cure; and this prescription, let me say, is addressed, not to the Church at Ephesus only, but to you. Truth, my dear friends, is not a thing of one century that becomes a lie in the next; nor is truth something of latitude and longitude, that may be true in Rome, false in Paris, and neither the one nor the other in London. Truth is like its God-the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. What was true when addressed to the Church at Ephesus, either as descriptive of its excellencies, its disease, or its cure, is just as true and as applicable in the day in which we live, and in the place in which we now sit. Do not suppose that this is a prescription for the Church at Ephesus, but not for the congregation in Crown Court. It is not so; it is God's prescription for human-kind-it is a leaf from the tree of life, to be laid upon the agonized and bleeding heart of humanity—it is God's cure for man's sin, as precious to you as ever it was to the Angel at Ephesus, or the meanest worshipper in his congregation.

This prescription is contained in these words: "Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and take away thy candlestick out of his place." Let me now very plainly lay this before you. First, there is retrospect, "remember from whence thou art fallen;" secondly, there is repentance, "repent;" thirdly, there is reformation, "do the first works;" and lastly, there is a menace, a threat, that if she did not do so, her candlestick, i. e. her visible privileges, should be removed from its place.

First of all, there is a retrospect; that retrospect is the exercise of memory. We are thus taught that God means every power to be wielded in his service. I do not believe that there is a single faculty in the human bosom to which Satan has any right, or which the world can command as its own monopoly. I believe that all the powers of man are meant to serve God — all