may come in and occupy its place. But you are not, therefore, to say that it is not good that the drunkard should be made sober, or that the sensualist should be made pure; because, though you have not wrought any change which will be permanently good, the probability is that you will bring him within the reach of the blessed Gospel. If you can make a man come to the house of God, you have at least brought him within the means of grace; but as far as the fact itself goes, if you expel the one preference, you only leave space for a more terrible passion to come in. Just on the same principle, that when fire has been set to the long grass in the vast prairies of America, and the wild Indians see the immense sheet of flame travelling towards them with the rapidity of lightning along the ground, they instantly kindle a fire in their immediate neighbourhood, and burn all the dry grass and brushwood for a few hundred yards round them, and when the flame reaches that spot, there is nothing left for it to feed upon, and thus the one flame extinguishes the other, the Divine prescription, the infallible specific, for expelling the evil spirits from the heart of man, is to admit the King of glory to reign and triumph within it. -- And now let me remind you, that when Christ comes into the human heart, the first effects of his approach will not be all that you could desire. No man has so dark and deep a conception of himself as that man in whom the work of grace is just beginning. For when that unutterable light enters the dark shades of my heart and conscience, it will reveal to me depth upon depth, evil upon evil, abyss upon abyss, deeper and deeper still; and in proportion as the soul's eye sees its sins more clearly, will the soul's sensibilities feel them more acutely; and instead of being consciously better, happier, more at rest, you will at first feel more miserable and wretched. We must all experience a deep descent into hell, before we begin our ascent into heaven. It is from the extremest point of our own depravity, wickedness, emptiness, ruin, that we see in the greatest lustre, and in the richest beauty, the unsearchable wealth of Christ. But after this storm there will be a calm. "I will come in and sup with him, and he with me”—i.e. I will not only do them good, but I will make them feel that I am doing them good. Not only will I "sup with him," i.e. do him good; but “he shall sup with me," i. e. he shall be conscious of that good. Supper, in ancient times, was the familiar and social meal. It was then that the master of the feast treated all his guests as equals, and entered into familiar and interesting conversation with them. It is thus that Christ comes into our hearts as to a high and blessed festival, at which he manifests himself to us, and we are made to see that manifestation. It is a joyful moment when the Sun of righteousness shines bright upon the soul; its withered branches are clothed with new leaves and fair blossoms, and its long silent caves are eloquent with new, glorious, and inexhaustible melodies; and man comes to learn that regeneration of heart and transformation by the power of the Gospel is not a mere dogma, a mere matter of form or ceremony, but a reality full of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. My dear friends, this is Christianity: Christ in the heart, and this alone, is Christianity. Christianity is not the shibboleth of a sect; it is not the dogma of a school; it is not succession from the Apostles; but it is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. It is Christ in the heart. Be not satisfied with standing by Christianity, or in hearing of Christ; but feel and know that your only safety is Christ in you. Be not satisfied with subscribing to an orthodox creed or confession of faith, or with repeating the most beautiful Litany: all this is consistent with the absence as well as with the presence of Christianity. But open your heart-accept him who knocks and seeks for admission, and then you will not need evidence that the Bible is true. If an angel were to come from the realms of glory and testify that the Bible is true, that would be but a creature's testimony; if a lost spirit wrapped in his flame-shroud were to come from the realms of the lost and testify in tones of anguish that Christianity is true, that would be also a creature's testimony; but when a man is turned from darkness unto light-once dead, now living - hateful and hating, now loving and beloved, and bearing on his brow the image of his God, and in his heart Christ the hope of glory, this is God's testimony that Christianity is true, it is Divine evidence, the most consummate, the most convincing, the most infallible. Christ in you will make your heart a Tabor, and every day a transfiguration. Old age may creep over you, and grey hairs whiten your head, and the brow grow wrinkled like the brown sea-sand from which the tide of life is ebbing, but your heart will feel green, and young, and buoyant, and the longest evening shadows will point nearest to the morning twilight. Is Christ in your hearts? Is there a new atmosphere around you? Is the cold avalanche that once chilled and compressed your heart, thawed into genial sympathies and charities that will feed and refresh all around? Are the sighs of your heart now prayers, and its joys now praise? Is it calm, quiet, resting in the Lord and waiting patiently for him? Quiet is the accompaniment of power and satisfaction. The full soul is silent; it is only the rising and falling tides that rush murmuring through their channels. Such a heart is thankful for every blessing God sends, and ever eager for any duty he may appoint. Christ in the heart will surely and speedily lead to Christ in the home-that sanctuary of strength-that source of a pure and noble people-that birth-place of yet unimagined possibilities of good. The Saviour in the soul will shine out and illuminate all around. No home is truly beautiful, till rays from Tabor and Gethsemane and Calvary light upon it. There can be no purely bright scene till lighted up by Christ's smile, nor any pure joy that is not kindled by his breath. When he is all and in all in the house, all things become changed. Sickness unlocks new sympathies, losses are met by new heroism, and death itself is seen and felt to be but God's process of colonizing heaven by selecting for it the choicest specimens of earth. Christ in the heart will ally us to every mission of love, beneficence, and grace, till that "hope of glory" which Christ is within us is realized in that blessed rest in which means cease, because the end is attained, and all discords and divisions will be lost in pure and eternal harmony, and the tree of life and the river of life shall be the joy and privilege of all the people of God. LECTURE XXXIV. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne."-REV. iii. 21. In the address or epistle to every Church of the seven, there is always the recognition of an overcoming one, and the promise of a special reward to him that thus overcomes. In every instance, the promise is given to the victor only; and in every case we are led to see that the victory is only to him who believeth that Jesus is the Christ; "for this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." And this teaches us too, that, if there be a chronological scale in the seven Churches,—if they be types of seven successive periods in the history of Christianity-I do not say or think they are, though some do so,—then we are taught by this, that in every age a Christian must expect to have conflict, and in every age a true Christian may be assured that he will have victory. The world may change its form, it may become more beautiful, or it may appear more friendly, but it is the world still, and he that is the friend of the world is the enemy of God. By the world I do not mean the stones of the earth, the sweet streams, the trees, the hills, the valleys-the stars of the sky, or the flowers that are the smiles of God and the stars of the earth: these are not sinful, and to admire them and to love them is not to be guilty of sin. What I mean by the world is, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." These are the component parts of the world, just as righteousness and peace and joy are the com |