loss of the babe that that mother clasped so affectionately, and that father loved so dearly. And thus Christ chastens those that he loves. We walk in this dark and chequered scene in this world, as if we were in the dark and gloomy crypts of some vast cathedral ; that glorious cathedral above us is the heavenly and the better land. At times, as we are walking in the dark crypts below, we hear the pealing of the organ--some unspent sounds of the choir that chants perpetually the praises of God, and ever as a brother or a sister or a babe or parent goes up to join that happy and glorious choir in the magnificent cathedral above, some beams of its celestial light come down upon us to tell how beautiful it is, and some of its harmonies light upon our hearts more audibly, to tell us how sweet its exercises are, and we are ready to exclaim, "Oh that I had wings like a dove, that I also might fly away and be at rest!" absent from the body, that I might there be present with the Lord.

It is also one end of affliction to enable us to preach consolation to others. I believe that few ministers of the Gospel whom I have known, have been able to speak true, heart-reaching comfort to those that mourn. I have not been, in my own biography, comparatively, an afflicted man: and what I speak to you that mourn is more what I trust the Spirit teaches me in his word, than what the Spirit has yet taught me in painful, personal, and bitter experience. What may be before me,

I know not; but what is past has been to me abundant reason for gratitude; never, I trust, an occasion for presumption.

There are persons who will speak thus to those who are suffering under the deepest and the bitterest calamity, "Oh, you should not be so sorrowful!" "It is wrong to be thus overwhelmed with grief." That is the most miserable of all comfort. There are times when grief requires an echo-when no consolation we can offer can avail, when the full heart requires a full vent for its feelings, when we must weep with those that weep in order to comfort; and they are but

miserable comforters who have not learnt this. We therefore are often afflicted, and especially ministers of the Gospel, in order that we may be able to sympathise with those that suffer, and thus to comfort others.

And lastly, the Saviour chastens those whom he loves, in order to glorify himself. Sick-beds are often more eloquent than the most brilliant discourses. When the world sees us patient in tribulation; plunged in suffering, and yet exclaiming, in the depths of our agony, "The cup that our Father hath given us to drink, shall we not drink it?" saying, even while we suffer, "Happy is the man whom the Lord chasteneth ;" and that our present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed; when the world can thus see joy on a sick-bed-happiness in poverty-contentment in distress-acquiescence in bereavement; then the world will say, There is something in that Bible which there is not in any book of ours, and something in that Christianity which is not in any philosophy of ours; and the religion that makes men thus triumph over sick-beds, and pain, and sorrow, and suffering, and even exclaim by the margin of the grave, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" is a religion that man did not make, for man's religion can never touch man's heart-it is from God; and we will go and seek to taste of a cup which the believer has drunk, and has found to be so sweet and so precious, if peradventure we too may find it and drink of it likewise. The Lord bless what I have said, to his glory and to our good! Amen.

LECTURE XXXII.

THE APPEAL OF LOVE.

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"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." -REV. iii. 20.

WE may love the unseen, but we cannot love the unknown; it is therefore important to determine who it is that thus speaks, "I stand at the door, and knock." You must have noticed, and many, I hope, remember the beautiful, varied, and expressive names by which he who thus speaks is represented. He is spoken of in the very introduction of the Apocalypse as "He that is like unto the Son of Man; clothed with a garment down to the feet; his head and his hairs white as snow, and his eyes as a flame of fire. And when I saw him," says the Seer, "I fell at his feet as dead." It is this divine personage then-he that bowed the heavens to open our graves-who came from the throne, and suffered on the accursed tree-who is love, and by whom alone God's love can light upon us-who speaks not to the bishop of Laodicea alone, but unto every minister in Christendom-unto you or me, and each one of us, with as distinct an emphasis as if that one man were the only being in the universe-" I stand at the door of thy heart and knock: if any man will open, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me." The door that is here alluded to is the door of access to the human heart; the home to which he seeks admission, is the temple that he originally built so glorious for himself, but over which there hath

passed so deep, so terrible an eclipse. Certainly in the applicant who claims, nay, who does not claim it as his right, but who asks as a favour admission to the house; and the house to which he seeks admission, there is the greatest possible contrast. The one, the applicant, is all glory, beauty, excellence, perfection, blessing; the other, the human heart, that house that was once built of jewels, made so beautiful and resplendent, with a light so glorious-is now a wreck ; poisonous weeds are growing about it; all venomous reptiles crawl and breed in its defaced and darkened chambers, and all evil spirits hold in it their foul and continuous festival, though from its surviving holy spots there leap forth at intervals, those live sparks that reveal what the glory once was, and what the desolation now is, and give earnest of what the beauty shall be when the Creator who formed it shall rebuild and rebeautify it, and make it his own home again for ever.

But in looking at such a house, and acquiescing in the description of it which I have given, and in noticing such an applicant, it may be asked,-Why should he approach it? why should he knock and ask for admission? It cannot be because we have invited him; we never asked him to do so. The Church at whose minister's heart, and at whose people's heart, he asks for admission, repeated the language and gloried in the features which we repeat and glory in, "We are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing" and little knew, what we know not as we ought to know, that we are poor and blind and naked, glorying in our shame, and having nothing good that we can call our own. It is not true, then, that we have invited him. When he came to his own, his own received him not. It was written upon his lifeinscription only equivalent in the depth of the wickedness it revealed, to that which was read upon his cross "He was despised and rejected of men." We asked him not; why, then, does he come to our hearts, and ask for admission? It cannot be to augment his own

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happiness; it cannot be to add to the praises that are continually hymned before him; for where he is, in the unutterable glory, "the glorious company of the apostles praise him; the goodly fellowship of the prophets praise him; the noble army of martyrs praise him;" his Church redeemed from every land and people and tongue continually praise him. It cannot be, then, that it will exalt him, that our faint notes should be needed to mingle with the hallelujahs of the blessed, or that our presence in glory is requisite to make that glorious One more glorious than he is. If he had expunged the earth from the number of the orbs of creation when that earth fell, or if he had done what it deserved, made this earth one vast grave, and Adam and Eve its first, its last, its twin occupants; if each wind that rushed over it had sung a perpetual miserere, and the curse it provoked had wrapped it as a dark and terrible shroud for ever, heaven would not have wanted inhabitants, nor would God have been without praise, nor would Christ have been less happy in himself: why, then, does he thus appeal to our hearts, and knock at the door of our minds, and ask admission to our bosoms? There are angels that fell from a greater height still and are plunged into more terrible woe; and yet he speaks not thus to them. The only answer is, he knocks at the door of each heart in the exercise of that sovereign love in which he came to the cross and died for us. He comes first to us; he does not wait till we go to him: it is the grand characteristic of the Gospel, that the first movement downward is on God's part, before there can be a responsive movement upward on our part. If Christ were to wait till we spontaneously made application to him, he would wait for ever. But his love is too great for that; call it election, call it predestination, call it sovereignty, call it grace, call it by whatever name you like best, the fact is, that he draws us before we follow, that he teaches us before we respond to him, that he speaks to us in his love, and our love is but the echo of the love that is in him, the great original.

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