on this point. When the Pharisees who believed tried to compel the Gentiles to be circumcised and to keep the law of Moses, Peter spoke up boldly on the matter and said (Acts xv. 10), "Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear. But we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they." What can be stronger than this? How clearly it forbids all human intervention or encroachment on the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. The great doctrinal epistles also, those to the Romans and the Galatians, are full of this contrast. The Apostle Paul, when he has established the fact of Justification by Faith, proceeds to show the consequences of that doctrine in the sixth and eighth chapters of the Romans. He says (vi. 17-18), "God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness"; and (ver. 22) "Being now made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." Here, then, we have St. Paul distinctly showing that the form of doctrine which was delivered to the Romans, or in other words, the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus

Christ, was the only means of freedom. Again, in the eighth chapter of the same epistle and the second verse, he says, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death "-hath made me free. Recall for a moment who it is that speaks: a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the righteousness of the law blameless; and yet, before he received the knowledge of Christ -before he accepted His salvation-he was not free, he was bound in superstition; a bond slave, with no will, no power of his own, but the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made him free. In the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians we find the contrast of which we are speaking still more plainly set forth (verses 3 and 4), "We, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons"; and (verse 9), "But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days and months, and times and years"; and (iv. 31, v. 1), "So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith

Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." St. James's Epistle is very full of the same thoughts, speaking of the Gospel as "the perfect law of liberty," and bidding Christians to speak and so do "as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty." And the same free course of action is spoken of by St. Peter when he says (1 Peter, ii. 15, 16), "So is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men; as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God."

Before leaving this part of our subject, it may be well to gather up some of the scriptural teaching on the point of man's free access to God through Jesus Christ, without the aid of symbols, forms, human intervention, and human merit. The grand principle is taught in such expressions as (Matt. xi. 28), "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"; and (Heb. x. 19, 20), "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us,. let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith." The needlessness and sinfulness of symbols to aid our approach to God is shown in the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy, 15, 16, "Take ye therefore good heed

unto yourselves; for that ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure."

The danger of reliance on outward forms and observances is the subject of one of our Lord's discourses to the Pharisees, recorded in the seventh chapter of St. Mark, in which He quotes the words of Isaiah, saying, "This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me"; and, speaking to the Samaritan woman on the sacredness of places, he says, "The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father......But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in the spirit and in truth." (John iv. 21, 23, 24.)

Human intervention between God and man is forbidden, and shown to be impossible, by such passages as (1 Tim. ii. 5): "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." And (Rev. xxii. 8, 9), "I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow

servant." Of human merit, and its powerlessness to mediate between God and man, we have spoken in a former lecture. One blessed verse telling of the freedom of God's grace, and the powerlessness of man's merit, may suffice in this place (Eph. ii. 8, 9), "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast."

IV. The bondage of superstition and the freedom of the Gospel has so far been considered by the light of Reason, History, and Scripture. It remains that we should consider the point practically, or in its connection with our own lives and 'worship. The four forms of superstition which we have already noticed are to be found in some measure in every heart, and especially at the present day.

Symbolism asserts itself in many ways: it is to be traced whenever we seek the aid of something seen to draw our thoughts and hearts to Him who is unseen. This is the essence of the Romish Ritual, and of that excessive Ritual in the Church of England which is no inapt imitation of it. The priestly vestments, which profess to typify the offering of a sacrifice for the quick and dead, are instances of this form of superstition: when we are taught to behold in the garments of the minister types of purity, of the yoke of the Gospel, of