the very thing their consciences complain of is, that they are too miserably shamed and humiliated already. Multitudes also will expect much from purgatorial fires hereafter, as if being duly chastised could make a good conscience. or as if these supposed fires would not rather burn in the brand of sin than burn it out! Now these poor scanty methods of delusion, unlike as they are to each other, are just as good one as another, because they are all equally worthless. Who could believe that rational beings, having so grand a way open to the new footing of sons of God, and having once conceived that way, could yet subside into these wretched futilities?

Worthier of sympathy but scarcely more worthy of the gospel name, are those hapless souls, who have fallen under their bad conscience to be forever harrowed and tormented by it. They have no faith to believe in a concrete, personal grace, and are only haunted by the nightmare of their moral convictions. They mope along their pathway therefore, looking always shamefully down; as if the sky above were paved with condemnations. If they bear the Christian name, they have yet no real peace, no sweet element of rest and confidence. They seem ever to be saying, "mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up." Or sometimes there is a trouble more specific--some one sin, the shame, the inward mortification, or damnation of which, follows them, day and night, and even year by year; a crime unknown to the world, but for which they inwardly blush, or choke with guilty

pair, whenever it meets them alone. They seem to be even everlastingly dishonored before themselves. Perhaps they are, and fitly should be; but, my friends, there is a medicine for all such torments. Looking down upon your sins, or your particular sin, you can be, must be, everlastingly shamed; but if you can look away to Christ, take hold of Christ and rise with him, you shall go above your trouble, you shall be strong, and free, and full, and even righteous; established in all glorious confidence, because your very consciousness is lifted and glorified, by what comes into it from God's eternal concourse and friendship.

And here, just here, in fact, we strike the culminating point of wonder and glory in what Christ, by his more perfect offering, has been able and was even required to accomplish, to put us on a footing of complete salvation; viz., a restoration, forever, of the soul's lost honor. We could not take our place among the pure angels of God, and be really united to their blessedness, when we are inwardly self-disgusted, shamed, and even to be eternally stigmatized, by our condemning consciences. Nothing sufficiently restores us, which does not restore the mind's honor. And this, exactly, is our confidence; "that we are to be found unto praise, and honor, and glory, at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." We are even called to "seek for honor, and glory, and immortality." What dishonor, what possible shame, can be our tor ment, when our very consciousness is robed in the riglit eousness of God? There is to be no more condemnation, no more conscience of sins; simply because we are sc

raised in the plane of our sentiment and life, that we may think of ourselves, without any sense of dishonor upon us. We go in-heirs, sons, princes of God-joining ourselves boldly to all the royalties, and sublime honors of the kingdom.

Are there none of us, my friends, that have many times sighed after just this hope, nay, that are sighing for it now? You have lost forever, you say, the chas tity of your nature, you are and must forever be a guilty man; how then can you ever think of yourself without mortification? Getting into heaven itself, what can you ever do with so many bad facts upon you, and a bad conscience in you testifying eternally against them? No! no! There is even to be given back the sense of honor that was lost. You shall go in, not to hang your head, but to hold it up in praise and confidence. Now that mighty word is fulfilled according to its utmost meaning "raised up together to sit in the heavenlies." We are there "together" in the common fold, we "sit" there in a titled security, the "heavenlies" are all ours-the honor, the confidence, the peace, the praise. O my God, what reverence shall every creature have for every other, when thou puttest honor upon all! gathering in before thee, nothing which defileth, or abideth in shame, but only such as Christ hath raised to eternal honor, before both thee and themselves!

XV.

THE BAD MIND MAKES A BAD ELEMENT.

"Then answered the Jews and said unto him-say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?" -JOHN viii, 48.

It is often remarked as a curious, half ludicrous distinction of insane persons, that they look on others round them as being out of their head. And yet this kind of phenomenon is more or less observable, in all cases of diseased action, whether mental or spiritual; the subject sees his disorder, not in himself, but in the objects and conditions round him.

Under the disease or disaffection called sin, the same is true; as we may see by the answer of these carping hypocrites, when Christ reproves their high pretenses, and sanctimonious lies. "You call yourselves children of Abraham," he says, "when you do none of his works, when your fatherhood is more truly discovered in the father of lies. And as he abode not in the truth, and has no truth in him, so because I tell you the truth ye believe me not." They feel the sharpness of the words, but do not perceive the solemn justice of the argument--throwing it captiously back upon him as in the text; say we not well, that thou art a Sama

ritan and hast a devil?" Just as they should if his ar gument was true; for the men who have a devilish spirit are sure to see their devil objectively in others. There must be a devil on hand somewhere, they are sure, and who will expect them to find it where it is, in themselves? The truth accordingly which I now propose for your consideration is this:

That a bad mind sees bad things, and makes to itself a bad element. In other words, a bad mind projects its own evils into persons and conditions round it; charg ing the pains of its own inward disorder to the objects that refuse to bless it, and counting, it may be, Christ himself a sting only of annoyance.

It would be far more agreeable to me to assert this truth universally, or so as to include the good; showing how they convert all things to good by their bright and loving spirit, and how the stones even of the field are in league with them to bless them; but this would take me over too large a ground, and therefore I must be content to occupy you, for the time, with a subject not grateful in itself, hoping that you may even find the greater benefit in it. If the errand we are after is not pleasant, if it compels us to go burrowing into the dark, underground abysses and pains of evil in the soul, let us not recoil from the task, because we find a great deal of our conceit inverted and a great many of our complaints of God and the world turned back upon ourselves.

I do not mean, of course, to say, that we can have nothing to complain of, or that other men can not do