thankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God." One more fact will be enough. If any man would see the multiplying power and intensity of spiritual evil, let him compare the unity of the Church in the beginning with the schisms of Christendom now. The same sin which entered and destroyed the unity of the whole creation, has reentered and broken up again the restored unity of the new. But, to leave both the past and the present, let us remember that the time is not yet. come. The full unfolding of sin has ever been at the close of the dispensations of God; it has been at its worst when He was nearest. So, we are taught, it shall be again. All God's word foretells it; all the face of the world bespeaks the working out of the prophecy. The day of Christ shall not come, until there "come a falling away first, and that wicked be revealed." The mystery of evil, which by one man entered into the world, is now teeming with its mightiest birth. Men have sinned long and sinned greatly against Heaven; but there is a warfare coming, a strife of man's will against the will of God, in the surpassing tumult of which shall all former disobedience be forgotten.

1 2 Tim. iii. 1-4.

C

The Evil One shall be loosed upon the earth, having great wrath, "because he knoweth he hath but a short time." And all things are making ready for him the powers of spiritual wickedness marshalling themselves in secret, unfolding their legions, and unrolling their banners around the camp of the saints. Hell is moving itself to meet his coming. And then shall the sin which by one man entered into the creation of God be at its full, and the world-long growth and gathering of this awful mystery be accomplished. It shall at last stand forth in the earth, at the full stature of its hate and daring against Heaven; and by the coming of the Son of Man in glory shall be cast out for ever.

SERMON II.

CHRISTIANS NEW CREATURES.

2 COR. v. 17.

"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

SUCH is the change which passes upon Christians through the power of Christ our Lord; they are made new creatures. And this deep mystery of our own renewed being flows out of the mystery of Christ's incarnation. He took our manhood and made it new in Himself, that we might be made new in Him. He hallowed our manhood, and carried it up into the presence of His Father as the first sheaf of the coming harvest, and the first-fruits of a new creation. And we shall be made new creatures through the same power by which He was made man-by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. He was born in the flesh, we in the Spirit: His birth is the symbol of our regeneration, and we shall therefore be conformed to His likeness. "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we

know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." In the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of His kingdom, that is, at the resurrection of the dead and the restitution of all things, we shall be born again of the earth, as Adam in the beginning. In the day-spring of the resurrection the dew of our birth shall be "of the womb of the morning."

So much we know generally, and of the future. But St. Paul says, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." There is, therefore, a particular and a present sense in which this is true; and this it concerns us most of all to know. We will see, then, how it is that we may be said to be new creatures now; and afterwards we may learn some useful lessons from it.

1. And, first, we are made new creatures by a present change working in our moral nature; that is to say, through our regeneration in holy baptism. By the love of God electing us to a new birth of the Spirit, and by the Holy Ghost working through that visible sacrament, we are translated from wrath to grace, from the power of darkness to the kingdom of His dear Son. Old things pass away, and all things become new around the regenerate man. We look upward to a new heaven; we stand upon

1 John iii. 1.

a new earth both are reconciled; heaven, through the blood-shedding of Christ, is opened to all believers; and earth, healed of the original curse, is pledged to restore its dead. We are brought under the shadow of the Cross, within whose dominion the powers of sin are bound. We receive that thing which by nature we cannot have a baptism not of water only, but of the Holy Ghost. It does not more become us to search into God's secret manner of working in holy baptism, than in the holy Eucharist; both are sacraments, both mysteries, both symbols of the eye, both gifts of grace to the soul of man. In baptism we are so made new creatures, that we may either grow daily to the sanctity of angels, or may fall, and hold our regeneration in unrighteousness; as angels that kept not their first estate still hold their angelic nature in anguish and in warfare against God.

2. But further; Christians are new creatures by present, ever-growing holiness of life by the renewing of their very inmost soul. They are absolutely new creatures-new in the truth of moral reality new altogether, but still the same. I will pass by the grosser kinds of sin, for instance, profligacy of life, mockery of religion, or unbelief, and take for example two men of opposite characters; -a pure man, whose heart and imagination is hallowed by the Spirit of Christ; and an impure