they anticipated that his life would show that his name was the symbol of reality and substance, and that he would indeed be favoured of God. In this world, names are mere empty sounds; in the Bible, they are realities. We live very much in the realm of fiction; the Bible speaks, and its true heroes act, in the realms of reality and truth. It appears that the employment of John, in common with his brothers, was that of a fisherman on the banks of the lake Gennesaret: one can well conceive that such an employment is calculated, from the dangers to which it is always exposed, to remind perpetually of Providence.

All was obscure, and humble, and lowly, in the origin of John; his parents fishermen, his birthplace a lowly village, and his own employment that of his parents. Nor is all this without instructive lessons to us and the Church at large. It teaches us what we learn on every page of the Bible, that "not many great, not many mighty, not many noble are called;" -a passage, however, I may here observe, sometimes misconstrued for it is quoted as if it taught that God does not call many great and noble to the knowledge and enjoyment of the Gospel of Jesus; but this is not its direct lesson: the Apostle is speaking, not of converts to Christianity, but of ministers of the Gospel, when he says that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence." When he says that not many of such great ones are "called," he means, not called to be ministers of the Gospel or preachers of the truth. Who knows but, in the obscure lanes and alleys of this great metropolis, where the only visitor of love is the pioneer of the ragged schools, and the only other is visitor of law, the policeman, there may be concealed, in subterranean depths into which few except those I have referred to find their way,-or would follow

in damp lanes and wretched dwellings, some yet undeveloped John, or Peter, or Paul; and we of this congregation may be the instruments, by the agency of our schools, of bringing forth from its concealment at least some bright and precious gem, that shall have engraven on it the name, and reflect on earth and throughout eternity the lustre, of Him who loved us, and redeemed us by his blood!

One day, John the fisherman, the son of Zebedee, heard a voice by the banks of the Jordan, which roused, interested, and enlisted him-it was the voice of John the Baptist, who is thus described by the Evangelist himself: "There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but he was sent to bear witness of that light." The Seer saw this John baptizing, and heard him confessing that "he was not the Christ, but that His shoe's latchet he was unworthy to loose." But he heard from him a still more touching and beautiful cry, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world!" Two disciples heard the Baptist on this occasion, as we are informed in John's Gospel, (chap. i. 37,) and followed Jesus: one of these two was no doubt the Evangelist himself; and in so doing they give us a beautiful and instructive example. John and Andrew heard the Baptist preach, but they did not follow the Baptist-they "followed Jesus." It should be so with us; we ought to hear the minister preach, but we must rise above the minister, and rest only on the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. It is a very interesting fact, too, that as John was converted by hearing Christ preached as the Lamb, so John is the Evangelist who, whether in his Gospel or in the Apocalypse, brings forward Christ most frequently as the Lamb-"Behold the Lamb of God!”— and again in the Apocalypse he represents him as a "Lamb seated on his throne;" as if the first view of Christ presented to his mind were the view that was

permanently before him in all its touching beauty and glory, and evermore most interesting to his heart. John was not made an apostle as soon as he was converted; he was left to show his consistency as a private Christian first and having illustrated and adorned the humbler office by his life, he was chosen to be a disciple, and subsequently to be an apostle; he acted the Christian well, and then was admitted to the ministry; he showed the consistency of the humble believer, and then he was consecrated to the dignity of the disciple of the Lord.

John and James were in their boat, on the shores of their native lake, or sea as it is called, mending their nets, when Jesus passed by and said, "Follow me ;" and the record is, "straightway they left their nets, and followed Jesus." There was power in those words; they awakened echoes in the heart of the Apostle; and he bore witness to Christ's truth, as not in word only but also in power. He became from that moment, we read, a disciple of Jesus, but he was not yet raised to be an apostle of Jesus. The distinction is this: the disciples were simply listeners to the teaching, and imitators of the example of Jesus; and it was only after they had served the apprenticeship of disciples, (if I may use the word,) that they were raised to the dignity of the apostleship.

We next find the appointment, or designation, or ordination of John, recorded in the Gospel of Mark, where we have these words: "And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would, and they came unto him. And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out devils. And Simon he surnamed Peter; and James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James, he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, "sons of thunder." It seems a rather remarkable fact, that the most momentous scenes in the history of God's intercourse with man have taken place upon mountain-tops. The ark rested upon the

loftiest pinnacle of Ararat; the trial of Abraham's faith took place upon the heights of Moriah; the law was given from Sinai; the blessing was attached to Gerizzim, and the curse to Mount Ebal; the temple was raised on Mount Zion; Jesus preached from a mountain as his favourite pulpit; he consecrated the Apostles upon a mountain-top; he himself was crucified on a mountain; he rose to the skies from Mount Olivet: and thus, the most remarkable events in the history of the past all took place upon mountain-tops. Whether it is that those who were more immediately concerned were raised above the din and stir of the world below, and brought, as it were, into more silent and complete communion with God-or whether it was a symbolical act, we know not. Certainly there is something elevating and ennobling when one stands upon a mountain-top, and, lifted above all the bustle and stir of the world below, sees God's great earth beneath, and God's over-arching sky above; and forms, as it were, some conception of the grandeur and magnificence of Him who is enthroned upon the riches of the universe. We read in this account of the consecration of the Apostles, that John and James were called Boanerges, the translation of which is given, viz. "the sons of thunder." We have been accustomed to view John as characterized by mildness and love exclusively; and we cannot well conceive, at first sight, why he was called by a name—“the son of thunder”—that seems the very antithesis of his character; and yet it may be that it was not nature that made the spirit of John so beautiful and calm, but the grace of God that so subdued and softened it. We read that on one occasion John showed a spirit incompatible with the spirit of the Christian : He himself states, "Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbade him, because he followeth not with us." Here was developed the spirit of the most exclusive sectarianism; "He does not take our form, he does not wear our name, or pronounce our Shibboleth, or conform to our ecclesiastical régime;

we cannot excuse his doing the greatest good, because he does not do it in our way." This is the spirit of a bigot, and the very air and odour of the inquisitor. Yet such a spirit was in John: grace extirpated it, but originally it was there. But this last was not the only occasion on which John exhibited a spirit equally unchristian. It was he who said, "Wilt thou that we command fire from heaven to consume them as Elias did?" Here was a budding Hildebrand in the college of the Apostles. Popery is not a thing peculiar to Trent or to the Tiber; it is no exotic, it is indigenous to human nature. The corrupt heart is its congenial soil. It is not a stock that needs to be nurtured with care, and that will perish if left alone; it is a weed, that grows and flourishes spontaneously in human nature; and human nature, on which we sometimes hear so eloquent panegyrics, if left to itself, would develop all the sectarianism of the first incident I have shown, and break out into the proscription and the angry persecution indicated in the second. We conclude, therefore, that while there may be much that was excellent and beautiful in the constitutional character of John, he was indebted rather to grace than to nature for all by which he is characterized and most remembered in the Christian Church. Nor did John himself ever fail to recollect the passion he had shown, and the rashness with which he had spoken; for it is he who thus writes, and writes from the depths of his own experience, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

One feature we find peculiar to the character of John-one which he assumes for himself; and a very beautiful one it is," the disciple whom Jesus loved.' He calls himself by this name throughout the Gospel; and in this he exhibits a trait very different from either of those to which I have just alluded. He does not say, "the disciple that loved the Lord," for there might have been there an assumption of distinction or merit, and