nity,-all are in the midst of us, and about us, and all these are God's kingdom, of which we are heirs and servants.

Such is its true character, ghostly and inward. It has its seat in the hearts of men, in their moral habits, in their thoughts, actings, and affections, in the form and the bias of their moral being: the visible forms we see are but the shadow of the reality; God's kingdom is the obedience of the unseen spirit of man to the unseen Lord of all. We see, then, what it is, and we see, therefore, how we may fall into a fault like that of the Jews, by transmuting the true idea of its spiritual character into the base alloy of earthly notions.

If, therefore, we look for Christ's kingdom among the popular theories of political and religious speculators, we shall look for the living among the dead. We have great need to guard against this danger; for the popular opinion of this day, whether in politics or religion, leads to an earthly conception of the Church, as of a thing subject to the senses and understanding of man. There is a sort of undercurrent perpetually drawing men away towards these errors. They either think that God's kingdom is, if not in itself secular, yet to be promoted chiefly by secular measures. This is a common form of religious Erastianism, of which we see many examples. Even good people have it and worse

people use it as a bait to draw better men into ensnaring toils, promising political advantage, increased efficiency, immediate results, apparent popularity, general co-operation-silver sounds, the bartering price, to bribe them from their stedfast hold of the broad rule of God's mysterious kingdom.

A second danger to which men are now tending is, to think that God's kingdom is to be spread by visible excitement of people's minds. The whole scheme of modern religion is visible motion; all its machinery is on the surface, all its momentum is from without. The springs of all power, if secret, are mistrusted; they must be laid bare for the childish curiosity of minds that cannot believe any thing to be going on unless they see its working, and understand how its results are brought about. This runs through almost all the movements by which men fancy the Gospel is to be propagated at home or abroad, and through all the means taken to impress it on individual minds. We are fallen upon a mechanical age, and men are blindly putting mechanical and material inventions in the place of moral power. This runs through both our popular religion and our popular education; e.g. the attempt to do by stimulating books what can only be done by the moral action of the Church of Christ, and the endeavour to effect upon masses of moral beings by outward systems

the work which can alone be done by the inward power of regeneration and the presence of the Holy Ghost. Much that is called efficient management of schools may be little better than this. There has been, from the beginning of the Gospel, an inwardness, and an invisibleness, about all great movements of Christ's Church, which ought to abash the hasty, talkative zeal of men into a reverent silence.

Knowing, then, the character of God's kingdom, we shall know both how to keep ourselves from these delusive schemes, and how to spread it on the earth.

We shall know, first, that the way to spread it is to have it ruling in ourselves, to have our own spirits brought into harmony with its secret workings. It is by the still strength of a holy character that we must leave the stamp of God upon the world. As they in the beginning went out from Judea into all the earth, trusting in God, counting themselves nothing, and their mission every thing; measuring themselves, and all the actions and energies of body and mind, by the faith which Christ had charged them to deliver, and counting only those labours to be God's service which fell within the limits of the truth, and all toil but unprofitable waste of life -nay, even as a very scattering of the Lord's harvest-which swerved from this rule of His ordain

ing; so we, believing and living in the faith of our baptism, and bending all our thoughts to be what He would have us, shall best spread His kingdom in an evil and revolting world, when we carry most of its heavenly character impressed upon ourselves.

And by knowing the character of His kingdom, we shall know, too, how to make that character our own; that is, chiefly, by a life of inward holiness. We know that it is an unseen kingdom; that, although Christ's Church is visible, as God was visible in Christ, yet it is also an unseen, because an inward, power, even as life is unseen which is in man. The visible Church is the symbol of Christ's presence, as the water of baptism is the symbol of a new birth, and the holy bread and wine the symbol of Christ's body and blood. We partake of baptism, that we may partake of the Church; our new birth is an engrafting into salvation, through the blood-shedding of Christ. As we may partake of the water of baptism, or the bread and wine of the holy eucharist, and yet have no part in the saving grace they bear to man, so may we partake of the holy Catholic Church, which to the eyes of faith is visible in all lands under heaven, and yet have no fellowship with the saints of Christ, seen or unseen-with that mystical body of Christ, which is the company of all faithful people with the

Church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven. We must seek to have the inward life of the Church in ourselves: it is not by loud profession of the faith, nor by headlong zeal for truth, nor by sharp controversies against error, nor by excited devotions; but by a silent and even life of faith and purity, by a patient following of Christ's holy footsteps, by a mastery of temper, by mortifying self, by a steady gaze on His mysterious passion, by being, and praying Him to make us, like Himself, that we shall bear within us the kingdom and the presence of God.

And to sustain this character within us at all times, we must remember that God's kingdom is at all times present with us.

It is upon us, and we cannot flee from it: whether we will or no, it encompasses us about; whether we remember it or no, it is ever proving us. We may be forgetful of its nearness, but it will not depart from us. We may fall, then, into a like fault with the Jews of old, and look out for Christ's coming when He is already with us;-even as some look about for their regeneration, being regenerate already, because they have not faith enough to believe the mystery of holy baptism. So, again, men are ever beguiling themselves with the dream that they shall one day be what they are not now they balance their present consciousness of a low worldly