expostulate and to be silent; to give them a fair opening to do high service for their Master, and then to pass them by, and choose some worthier and bolder man.

And here we see one of the worst antagonists of the Church of Christ,—a fair profession of Christianity with a predominant regard of self. Whatsoever wounds in the history of the Church may not be traced to the sword of persecution, or the grosser forms of sin, will be found to come from the overmastering powers of self-regard. Every body will admit that this is true, at the first hearing; but few really know the subtle insinuations and the full extent of this spiritual disease.

Now the peculiar danger of this fault may be seen by the following remarks:

1. It may consist with all that the Church requires of her people as a condition to communion in her fullest privileges. A man may be under the dominion of this paralysing fault, and yet really live in many ways a Christian life. A man may live a pure life, and blameless; he may be benevolent, and do many works of charity; he may be very systematic in his religious duties; and have no little zeal in works of a directly religious character; and yet, after all, it shall be not more true of Demas than of such a man, that he loves this present world, that he habitually and deliberately

seeks his "own, and not the things that are Jesus Christ's." For all the tokens of Christian life that I have spoken of, fall within the limit at which a man's self-regard is put on trial. There is a large field of common-place Christian duty, in which a man may toil without so much as ever once becoming aware that there is an irreconcilable variance between a governing regard to his own interests, and a faithful discharge of Christ's service; that there is a clashing point, where one or other must give way. A very large part of Christianity is directly favourable to a man's worldly interests:-all that goes to the establishing of a fair reputation, and to the conciliation of good will, is full of solid advantage; self-regard and self-respect urgently prescribe to a man such a habit of life as shall be in accordance with the outward example of Christ's true

servants.

Nay, even more, a man's own happiness is advanced by a Christian temper of mind; and thus far the service of Christ is oftentimes one of the chiefest and most refined means of cherishing himself.

Habits of devotional thought, and the hopes of an inheritance in light, kindle and sustain his interior life and peace; and in this way he makes the service of Christ minister directly to the selfregard which governs all his actions. Like educa

tion, or intellectual excitement, and other refined energies of the reason and moral habit, it becomes distinctly subservient to his predominant aim.

2. But, on the other hand, this habit of mind, while it satisfies the external demands of the Church, and ministers to the inward happiness of the mind, absolutely extinguishes all that ever produced any great work in Christ's service. It stunts the whole spirit at the standard of self; and makes all a man's thoughts and powers minister and submit themselves to his own aim and purpose. It makes a man live in himself and for himself, and bound himself about by his own horizon. He will be devoted and earnest just so far as he may without trenching upon the comfort of his own life. He will pray, and fast, and give alms, and witness for the truth, just so far, and just so long, as shall involve him in no austerity, or weariness, or selfdenial, or loss of popularity. All that goes beyond this measure will be to him excessive, unnecessary, gratuitous; the boundaries of his own practice are fixed, he believes, at the ultimate point, and so become absolute; the aims which rise above or lie beyond his practice are visionary and impossible. Most desirable, he will admit- and would to God we lived in days when they could be accomplishedbut he deliberately thinks that times are changed; and what our fathers might reasonably do, we may

as reasonably forbear. They did great works, bore great self-denials, made great sacrifices; but then it was the custom of their day-society did not require of them many things which it exacts of us. And who would set himself against society? Who would affect strangeness and singularity? Who would live below his means in life, or not keep pace with others of his own rank and standing? —No, brethren, not to evangelize mankind, would such a man offend the fastidious feelings of society, or break the self-constituted proprieties of a perishing world; no, not for an Apostle's crown, nor for the love of Christ his Lord, would such a man say to himself, No change of times, customs, or conventional rule, can absolve me from the unchangeable law of self-devotion. No such man would say this, and act upon it. He stands well with the world; he is not censured by the Church ;-what more is necessary? Surely for him it must be gratuitous and ostentatious to take a rule and standard of his own above other men. Besides, it would offend them; it would be a rebuke to them; it would alienate them from him, and neutralise his influence for good: a man forfeits the effect of good example by going too far. So men tamper with the edge of conscience, and turn its keenness. Even they that have higher yearnings, and pulses that beat for nobler deeds, sink back acquiescingly

under the burdensome traditions of our easy life. Little by little their sympathies with high aspiring minds are blunted; every thing that goes beyond their own habit is over-much; every thing that would by consequence break in upon some part of their blameless easy course is impossible. Oh, none are so hard to rouse to great works of faith as they. If we should plead with a Magdalene out of whom have been cast seven devils, or a Peter that hath thrice denied his Lord, or a Paul who hath made havoc of the Church,-there is material for a substantive and vivid character, there is energy for a life above the world. Conformed to the likeness of their Lord, the examples of all living men are no more to them than the gaudy shifting clouds of an evening sky; moving along the path of the cross, all the soft and silken customs of life are as threads of idle gossamer. There is about them a moral weight, and an onward force, and a clear definite outline of character, before which every thing gives way. They hurry all before them, as by the spell of absolute dominion. They have about them a dignity borrowed from the grandeur of the end for which they live. Poverty and plainness, solitude and a self-denying life, in them no man dares despise; nay, all men feel that these harder features are more in keeping with the loftiness of