"St. Peter, he turned the keys about,
And answered grim :

• Can you love the Lord and abide without,

Afar from from Him?'

And the angels all were silent.

"Should I be nearer Christ,' she said,

'By pitying less

The sinful living and woful dead

In their helplessness?

Should I be liker Christ, were I

To love no more

The loved, who in their anguish lie

Outside the door?'

And the angels all were silent.

"The Lord himself stood by the gate
And heard her speak

Those tender words compassionate,

Gentle and meek :

Now pity is the touch of God

In human hearts;

And from that way He ever trod

He ne'er departs

And the angels all were silent.

"And He said, 'Now will I go with you,

Dear child of Love,

And I will leave this glory, too,

In Heaven above.'

"And He said, 'We will seek and save the lost,

If they will hear

They who are worst, but need me most,

And all are dear'

And the angels all were silent."

The angels all were silent! Nay, I think the poet is

wrong there! When there shall be no more sorrow

and no more sighing; when God shall have wiped all tears from off all faces, in the restitution of all things; when God shall be all in all; when the lost sheep is brought home, the lost coin found, the lost son welcomed repentant to his Father's home; when the whole meal is leavened; when the Son of Man, having been lifted up, has drawn all men unto Him; when He has destroyed the works of the devil; when He has had mercy upon all; when He has become Lord of the dead and of the living; when He hath gathered together into one all things in Christ; when He has reconciled. all men to Himself-and remember that every one of these sentences (whatever else there may be in Scripture which looks the other way) is a Scripture text and a Scripture promise then, if there be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance, what shall there be over myriads and the multitude which no man can number? What shall there be-if such a day ever come in the day of the universal redemption of mankind?

"And all through the mountains, thunder-riven,

And up from the rocky steep,

There rose a cry to the gate of heaven,

'Rejoice! I have found my sheep !'

And the angels echoed around the throne:

Rejoice! for the Lord brings back His own.""

The angels all stood silent? Nay, the poet is wrong there! but rather, when the Good Shepherd calls heaven and earth together to witness His final and eternal triumph, such a tumult of acclaim shall ring through heaven, such a seven-fold chorus of harping symphonies,

Such a whirlwind of multitudinous joy shall sweep the perfect diapason of those innumerable harps,

"With saintly shout and solemn jubilee,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud, uplifted, angel-trumpets blow,
And the Cherubic Host in thousand choirs
Sound their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just Spirits that wear victorious palms
Hymns devout and holy psalms

Singing everlastingly "—

Yea! There shall be such a song like the sound of thunder, and the voice of many waters, that the universe of God shall never have heard such floods of unimaginable music-no! not when herald angels sang the birth of the Saviour; no not when at creation's dawn! the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

SERMON VIII.

PREACHED IN ST. PETER'S, BALTIMORE, ON SUNDAY EVENING, OCT. 3, 1885.

The Lost Coin.

"EITHER What woman, having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?"-LUKE XV. 8.

I CHOOSE this subject, my friends, because it is suggested by the second lesson of this morning's service, and because it enables me to continue the line of thought on which I dwelt this morning in another church. Doubtless a passing curiosity to hear a stranger from your kin beyond the sea has brought many of you here to-night. My friends, you will hear no oratery; nothing to please or tickle the itching ear; nothing unusual to startle you. You will hear, I trust, a simple statement of some truths which are not without their own momentous import to your souls; but whether those truths bear any fruit, or are carried away by idle remarks which, like birds of the air, remain in flocks at every church door, that depends on you-on your own seriousness and nobleness of spirit-on your own meek

heart and due reverence for the eternal realities, and on Him to whom we pray for aid, and who can send forth His spirit, even as the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whither it goeth.

1. The word for the "piece of silver" in the original is drachma; in Wyclif's version it is rendered bezant; in Tyndale's, groat. It merely represents the current Greek silver coin of the day; and therefore, to many, the position of the parable, between that of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Son, seems something of an anticlimax. The lost sheep is a living thing, and might be regarded with affection; the lost son is unspeakably dear to the father's heart; but it might seem that the lost coin, being at the best but a dead thing, is less interesting and less estimable. Now, my friends, whenever there seems to us to be a defect of this kind in the order of the Lord's teaching, we may be sure beforehand that the defect is either in the narrator, or more probably in our apprehension; and I think that if we look a little closer at this short, intervening parable, we shall see that it contains some original, independent, and deeply instructive truths.

2. The progress in the three parables has sometimes been supposed to lie in the fact that the lost coin is one of only ten, and the lost son is one of only two, whereas the lost sheep is one of a hundred, and therefore less valuable or less likely to be painfully missed. The true explanation, I think, is different. It lies partly in new conceptions about the state of sin and new conceptions about the love of God; and if we can make these quite

clear, we may henceforth read the parable of the Lost