The Right Mind.

MARK V. 15.

"Sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind."

WITH every heart that Christ has set free, he has left this charge, "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee."-(Mark v. 19.) Into all social life, this light penetrates. Every man is to be to those around him a living preacher of the power of the Redeemer: he is to walk among his fellows as a witness for Christ. From him, too, the powers of evil have been banished (as in the case of the demoniac, Mark v. 18, &c.); for him life wears another countenance: he is no longer, if he lives, as he may, under the renewing influences of the Holy Ghost, the slave of dark, or sensual, or furious, or earthly spirits. Silently it may be-meekly and unobtrusively it must be, but yet most truly

-he is to bear witness to that mighty Deliverer, who found him out in his extremity, and broke the fetters which had bound his spirit. Those who mix with him in society, in business, in family life, are to feel that he is another man; that his is a spirit set free; that he is sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind (Mark v. 15); that he is acting on high motives; that there is in him nothing that is untrue, nothing impure, nothing which separates him from a holy, charitable intercourse with others round him. They are to feel, that he has learned the law of brotherhood which binds all men together, and perceived the special charge which has been laid upon himself.

This, brethren, if the grace of Christ is reigning in us, is the light which must break forth from our new life: it is thus that Christ is to preach through us, through us to heal those around us. And He will work through us, if we are faithful to our charge. We need not acquiesce in all the evils of the world: Christ has sent us into the world to testify of him, the Healer of its evil. True Christian men, in their own station, do raise the tone of life around them: in a thousand little instances which are occurring daily, they are bearing a witness for truth, for sincerity, for reality, for purity, for meekness, for self-denial, for a spiritual life, which is not lost. Nay, it is, in truth, through these smaller instances, that God for the most part works.

The great instances which shine forth

every now and then, and are in all men's mouths, are themselves, if they have anything real in them, the fruits of those thousand less, unobserved acts of truth and holiness, with which, as with the morning dew, the lives of his saints have been perpetually gemmed. And this is to be one great encouragement to us to labour, that Christ will thus graciously accept and bless it even to those who may never know us. For so it is, that, most secretly, society is leavened for good or for evil. How many holy men have prayed and waited long upon their Lord for strength, and suffered and resisted temptation, and crushed the evil self within, and so borne their witness for Christ, before any evil influence in society was uprooted, or any holy and true principle established, or widely spread abroad. And thus their secret struggles, their slowly ripened Christian grace, have become the blessing of the church around them; even as the strong foundations of those coral islands of the southern seas, which are now so rich and verdant with the prodigal upgrowth of grass, and flower, and tree, were wrought silently in the chambers of the deep by thousands of living beings, which were never seen by those who have entered into their labours. And we may have a sure confidence, that so it will be with our labour, if only it be wrought in truth and faith; because we have a charge from Christ, and he will not fail us in fulfilling it.

And if this is our first lesson, our second lies

close beside it. It is, that our own safety must consist in thus working for Christ.

Even as from the recovered demoniac, (Mark v. 20) so from us, also, the powers of evil are to be kept off by our active fulfilment of our own charge. For they lie in wait for us, even as they did for him. All the turns of our life, if it be not spent in Christ's presence, expose us to danger. In our daily use of the abundance of all things, does not the evil spirit of selfishness lie, as in ambush, ready to seize on us and bind up our soul in bars of iron? or, if we lack all things, are not the devices of envy, bitterness, and hatred, ready to seize on us? And so it is with all our life: business threatens to make us worldly; leisure, shallow and frivolous; ease, to make us thoughtless of those around us; sorrow, to make us sour towards them; a full provision of meats and drinks, to make us sensual; the lack of them, to lead us to dishonesty in success, self-confidence chokes modesty, and in danger and extremity, expediency and falsehood easily bear down our faith in what is right and true.

Surely, then, the spirits of evil do threaten us; they are ready to sweep on us, to make us their prey; and only in our Saviour's presence are we safe. And how may we cling to that? How, but by labouring for him? This, of his grace, shail be our strength. For, if we thus enter on our work, he will be with every one of us. Every