earthly and corruptible reward underwent so much labour and took so great pains, should not we speak with subduing solemnity of utterance, and hear with thrilling interest, and act with deep and earnest energy, for an eternal one? Eternity is that inexhaustible and incomprehensible word in which our life culminates, that makes all the difference. In a very few years, - it may be,

to some of us, in a very few days,-the outward tent in which we have tabernacled shall be struck and be folded and disappear, but its inmate emerges only into greater light; this soul which now thinks and feels, and hopes and desponds alternately in every one -this living principle, which now meditates in one and puts off in another, struggles and battles with conscience in a third, — would be a Christian if he could give up his lusts in a fourth, dares not be a Christian because it would interfere, he thinks, with his happiness, in a fifth, this live spark called the soul, which is, after all, the man, and of which the body is but the covering, or the outward machinery that enables it to communicate with the outward world,—must stand before God, and receive there, either the sentence of endless suffering, or the inheritance of everlasting joy.

Let us ask ourselves, and let us meet the question, Is there such a place as hell? is that word a bugbear wherewith to frighten children, or is it a reality? I cannot conceive of heaven without a hell; I cannot conceive the necessity of the Gospel, without granting the prior necessity of eternal punishment of sin; and if it too be a fact, that the many are called and that the few only are chosen; if to be lost is not a strange or unfrequent thing; can that man be possessed of common sense-does he show moderate consistency if neither lunatic nor demon - does he fail to acquire a tremendous responsibility, who will venture-dare-to put off the anxious consideration of the great and solemn prospects of eternity, till it may be too late to consider them in time, or his body too feeble to grapple with them through disease? Young men, I speak especially to you- do let us consider this subject; do pause and entertain the question, Whither we are going? what hereafter will be to us? what is to be the issue for ever? What is the meaning of this preaching every Sunday, this bearing every Sunday, this circulation of Bibles, this spread

ing of the Gospel, this stir and bustle about God - the souleternity? I am not here to entertain you, or to do so much work for so much pay. We are handling sacred and momentous things; we are here to gather light wherein to see what our future state shall be. Our souls may be lost, and for ever.

If Abraham could be lukewarm, when he pleaded for the cities of the plain - if Moses could be lukewarm when he raised the serpent of brass, and bade the dying look that they might liveif David could be lukewarm when he sought to propitiate the destroying angel, as he smote down thousands at every blow—if Aaron could be lukewarm when he stood between the living and the dead-then may ministers of the Gospel be lukewarm when they preach such solemn truths, and hearers of the Gospel be "neither cold nor hot" when they listen to them. My dear friends, let me ask you again to study and examine the disclosures of the Gospel. If they be indisputably true, as they are, receive them into the very depths of your souls; let them put forth their full force within you, as plastic principles, as living effective sayings, as words whose echoes are joys or judgments in eternity: if they be not true, then act consistently; reject them, denounce them, treat them, not with apathy, but with hostility; they are in such a case bitter impostures, try to exterminate them. I solemnly believe that there is not a spot on which a man can stand with consistency, till he take his place with blaspheming atheists, in that vacuum in which no soul can breathe and no wing can soar, and say, "No God," or with the evangelical Christian who can pour forth from the very heart the inadequate expression of its fervour, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."

Let me ask you at your leisure to read a book which I have studied with much pleasure, and, I trust, not without profit, "James's Earnest Ministry." An excellent elder of the Church of Scotland, Mr. Hope, has made a present of a copy of this book to every parochial clergyman in the Church of Scotland. Earnestly do I pray that upon the reading of such a book a blessing may descend, and that the clergy of that Church may at last discover that we have had enough of intellectual preachers

more than enough of metaphysical preachers-plenty of popular preachers; what we require-what the age- - what souls and Christianity require, are living, simple, earnest ministers. I believe that one earnest preacher of eternal truth, however deficient he be in eloquence, in logic, in talent, is worth twenty of your intellectual preachers whom gaping crowds rush to hear, and dying hundreds applaud, and pass to the judgment-seat without one responsive feeling of love to God, or anxiety about their precious souls. Such crowds thirst after mere splendour of diction, and they have their reward. To them buttercups in the field are more precious than seams of gold below it. The earnest infidel is more than a match for the lukewarm Christian. To what is Mahometanism indebted for its spread? To the earnestness of Mahomet and those that followed him. To what is Popery indebted for its triumph? To the lukewarmness of Protestants, and to the zeal, the enthusiasm, the devotedness of Roman Catholic priests. To what is it that Tractarians owe their progress? If those Tractarians were hypocrites, I should not fear them; but I believe them to be men thoroughly in earnest, and that they are prepared to sacrifice and to suffer in order to support what they believe to be the truth, but what we believe and know on no uncertain grounds to be fatal deception. And it is because the Romanist, the Mahometan, the Tractarian, are enduring, earnest, devoted men, that their errors spread, that perverts are made to them, and that Protestants give way before them.

I believe that the day is coming, nay, is almost come, when the great battle will be between living, earnest Christians, and living, earnest Papists, infidels, and skeptics. It will be the life of God against the life of Satan. You cannot but see in looking around you in the world, that what have been called "shams" are all being dissipated; hypocrisies are getting more and more at a discount; the sea of seeming ebbs every day, and men become realities. I see infidelity at length open, manly, earnest, active; I see Popery becoming undisguised, earnest, active. Oh! let not us, who have the truth, and know the truth, and I trust in some degree feel the truth, be "neither cold nor hot," but lukewarm, at such a crisis. The ark of the Lord is committed

to us great destinies are, humanly speaking, in our hands; God's glory is in the midst of us, to be obscured, betrayed, or rendered more luminous. Let us contend for the faith earnestly; let us fight the good fight; let us lay hold with no equivocal grasp on eternal life; let us live for the Gospel, and, if needs be, let us die for it. The world tells you constantly, extremes are bad, moderation is the right thing. My dear friends, in matters of the soul, extremes are the highest sense, moderation is the greatest madness. There is, as I have told you, no medium between cold freezing scepticism-cold, barren, without God, instinct with hatred, enmity, and contempt, and the living Christianity which lives and dies for Christ Jesus.

I ask you then, hearers and readers, if you have feelings, where do they cluster? on what soil do they grow? what is their nutriment where is the place where they would culminate for ever? If you know the Gospel, is it possible that you can fail to feel its power? If you believe the Gospel, is it possible that you can fail to be influenced by it? And if we do feel, and are conscious that whatever else we be, we are in earnest our souls glow, as they should burn and glow, with divine lovethen, fathers in your families, brethren in your closets, all of you in the sanctuary, pray that there may be, what is indeed needed, a revival of living religion in the midst of us-a pouring out of the Holy Spirit of God, that with an abundant blessing there may be abundant results, and Christianity may rise from the dust in which it has been laid, and put on her bridal raiment, her coronation robes, and make ready as a bride to meet Him whose footfall is already heard at our doors, and who will come, and that right speedily.

LECTURE XXIX.

DIVINE COUNSEL.

"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see."-REV. iii. 17, 18.

I HAVE already explained the condition of this Church as expressed by the word "lukewarmness." I endeavoured to show what were its characteristics, and what was its nature. We have in the verses I have selected for this evening's lecture, the secret source of that false peace on the one hand, and of that lukewarmness by which this Church was characterised upon the other. Her peace was raised upon a false foundation, and therefore it was deceptive; her cry was, "Peace, peace," when there was really, and before God, no peace at all. The peace that stands every ordeal, that will gather strength from over-passing years, and immortality from surrounding decay, is that peace which is based on truth, which flourishes in light, and lives in the full and conscious revelation of all that heaven is, upon the one hand, and of all that hell is declared to be, upon the other hand. Peace, to be lasting let it never be forgotten-must be built upon truth; and were you called upon to part with one of these graces, part with peace, which is an annual-dying and living alternately; but not with truth, which is a perennial, and if lost, not easily recovered and replanted. Controversy for truth is duty truth is the precious thing, never to be compromised, never to be concealed, still less to be conceded.

This Church, then, believed, under the influence of false peace,