world, and to enable us to exercise a spiritual influence on others.

Let us, above all, never forget that if we want to lead any one to give up a satisfaction of any kind, we must offer him some other in exchange; and this other must be so superior as to render hesitation impossible. Never did simple arguments persuade any man to renounce the world. However incontestable their clearness, such evidence would only irritate. It is lost labour to tell men that the pleasures of the world are transitory and endanger their salvation; we must have something to give them in lieu of what we take away. Without this condition all arguments sound hollow. When God designed to snatch man from under the dominion of sin, he did not limit himself to promulgating his law, he manifested his grace; and hearts touched by this divine attraction found themselves freed from that of worldly joys.

First make true Christians; after that you will easily obtain the relinquishment of certain pleasures. There is no community of position, thought, and hope on earth, which can create so profound an intimacy, so thorough a mutual understanding, so blend soul with soul, and make confidence so free and complete as a common faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour.

The men who have been able to seize the true spirit of Christianity are of all others those who lead the most rational life. Do not let us be surprised at this; let us remember that the nature against which

the gospel protests is the moral state in which we are born, by reason of the fall. But there is another nature, a primitive nature, to which the gospel renders homage, and of which, by the mouth of St. Paul, it deplores the extinction, when speaking of those "without natural affection." This nature consists

It must therefore be

in the true relation of things. found once more when the first of all relations is acknowledged and respected. And this is the effect of Christianity; hence a life animated by the spirit of the gospel will be the most natural of all.

For those to whom religion is not all in all, there are in point of fact two spheres, the religious and the profane; but for the Christian nothing is profane, everything tends to holiness.

God does not precisely will to have glory; he has without willing it all the glory that belongs to him ; but he wills, which is a different thing, that we should render him glory; and as we can only do this by our sanctification, he wills our sanctification; this is expressly his will concerning us.

People have a habit of attaching to the word purity a sort of quite negative idea. According to the common interpretation, it implies a simple exemption from defilement, the absence of a fault rather than the presence of a quality; but in morals, purity no more consists in this than does happiness in an exemption from suffering; and just as we are positively happy only in so far as suffering is replaced by enjoyment; so we

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are only really pure in so far as defects have given place to qualities.

Nothing prevents a Christian from co-operating Christianly in undertakings where the concurrence of others is given in another spirit. Their intention has no power over his. And even where he finds himself unable to stamp on the work in hand the divine impress of the gospel, he has it, at all events, more or less in his power to introduce many elements which but for him might not have any part in that work, as for instance, moderation, simplicity, patience. It would be difficult to lay down rules and limits here, but we may safely trust them to the candid and delicate spirit, the religious tact of the true disciples of Jesus Christ; they have One to refer the matter to, and will be sure to know where they may lend a helping hand, and whence they must withdraw it.

That which is most wanting to believers, wanting indeed to the majority of men, and the absence of which nullifies the fairest hopes and explains so many reverses, is patience.

One is not a Christian, one has not comprehended Christianity, unless one is disposed to claim the lowest place as eagerly as the highest is claimed in worldly society; not to do this, is to forget that Jesus Christ came into the world not to be ministered to but to minister; that he washed the feet of his disciples, and wills that we should do likewise.

Fear is not a virtue, since perfect love is destined

to cast it out (1 John iv. 18). It has been said that all our courage may be referred to fear; but this is not true of Christian courage, which is a hope.

If Christian morality be impracticable, we must not call it beautiful, for nothing is beautiful but truth; if therefore it be true, it is practicable, in this sense, that none of its precepts are absolutely above the reach of the man armed with the armour of God; and more especially in this sense, that the spirit of this law becomes without reserve or restriction the spirit of the believer, on whom God not only imposes it, but with whom he assimilates and incorporates it by the power of love.

We may refute errors, but never passions.

Of people who give there is no lack; of those who yield, I mean who yield as Christians, submitting themselves to each other in the fear of God, there are very few.

Generally speaking, we judge those faults or vices. which directly injure society much more severely than those from which only individuals seem to suffer, because we proceed from the point of view of the general interest, in which ours is comprehended. Most men, in that narrow cause which is at bottom that of their own self, fail to reflect that, from the point of view of the gospel, a simple act of selfishness may be found much more serious than a theft, for it contains the germ of all crimes, and it has not the excuse of material necessity.

III. EDIFICATION AND CHRISTIAN LIFE.

1. Happiness; Unhappiness; Murmurings; Trials; Pain and Sadness; Joy and Sadness.

We must shake off a certain prejudice, which is itself a consequence of sin; I mean the prejudice which prevents our seeing order except where we see happiness; and which even goes so far as to make us believe in order wherever happiness, or the appearance of happiness, meets our eyes. It is not thus that the Scriptures judge. They present us with suffering as being an accidental form of order, as the order extant in moral disorder.

Our irreligion, which is only the highest form of our selfishness, will only recognise order there where our egotism finds means of satisfaction and earnests of security. This is to reverse the terms of a true proposition; for it is very true that order is happiness, but not true that happiness is order; and it is certain that happiness in sin, that is to say, in disorder, would only be an additional disorder.

Happiness is not a fruit of our nature, and does not grow spontaneously on the stem of life; it must needs be grafted there by a divine hand.

Happiness is proportioned to holiness; happiness is only holiness; and all that is lacking to holiness, that is to say, to obedience and love, is so much subtracted from happiness, so much curtailed from salvation.