a direct view of it, but I can infer the healthy root from the flourishing vegetation.

Be a Christian then in your behavior, and I will infer that you are a Christian in your principles. Let me see the flourishing vegetation, and I infer a healthy root, and look forward to an abundant harvest; let me see the fruits of righteousness in your conduct, and I infer that there is a root of sound and evangelical principle within you, and 1 look forward to an abundant recompense of reward. May the solemnity of this day be the means in the hand of Providence of adding to the vigor of this root-may it be watered by the dew of heaven-may it become more steadfast and immovable in your souls-may it be refreshed by the blessing of the Lord, that it may be fitted for bearing such an abundant crop of virtue and righteousness as will redound to His glory and to the honor of His religion in the world. If in the course of my acquaintance with you in after life I see you obedient to the gospel, attentive to its ordinances, holding up your face for its honor and its interests, zealous in promoting it, mindful of its duties, observant of its peace, its love, its candor, its fair dealing, its honesty, I shall then infer, in as far as it is competent for fallen man to do, that the grace of God has operated within you, and settled in your hearts a reign of faith, and charity, and righteousness.

SERMON X.

[DURING the years 1812, 1813, 1814, 1815, 1816, Dr. Chalmers kept an accurate record of his preaching, from which the following and some subsequent notices are extracted :

JOHN IV. 10.-Preached at Dairsie, 14th June, 1812. At Kilmany Sacrament, 21st June, 1812. At Edinburgh, Lady Glenorchy's, 19th July, 1812. At Anstruther, 23d August, 1812. At Denbog, 26th July, 1813.]

JOHN IV. 10.

“Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water."

It must occur to every reader of the verse before us, that something more is meant by living water than the natural element. There is a sense which lies under it-a thing signified, of which water, the subject of conversation betwixt our Saviour and the woman, was only the sign. And it might appear wonderful that this did not occur to the woman herself that she did not seem to be aware of any hidden import or signification in the term as used by our Lord; but, conceiving that it was still the true or literal water that He was speaking of, she asked how He could have of this water, as the well was deep, and He had nothing to draw with. The truth is, that though the term living is calculated to suggest some high and spiritual acceptation to us, it was not calculated to suggest the same thing to her. The original phrase for living water was applied by the people of those times to water in motion, or running water. It had two senses, and she, as was most natural, took it up in the sense in which it was most commonly understood. But could living water, in this sense, be drawn up from the bottom of a well? Yes, if the spring was of such force as to give velocity and sensible motion to the water, it was still called living water. It is probable that the water of

the well at which Christ and the woman of Samaria were then seated was living water. Certain it is that in the book of Genesis, xxvi. 19, where it is mentioned that Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water, it is called living water in the original language, and it is so marked on the margin of our Bibles. In the same manner in the book of Leviticus, xiv. 5, where the priest is ordered to kill a bird over running water, the words employed in the original are the same in signification with those which our Saviour made use of when He talked of living water in the text before us. This explains the circumstance of the woman's still talking of drawing living water, and drawing it out of a well. She was misled by the ambiguity of the term; and this ambiguity threw a deeper disguise over the sublime and spiritual sense of our Saviour to the woman of Samaria than it does to a reader of our common translation.

It were well if it were in the power of a mere critical explanation to throw aside the disguise, and to secure a ready access into the human heart for the spirit and doctrine of our Saviour. But I am afraid that the misapprehension of scriptural truth lies somewhat deeper than in the mere misapprehension of language-and that examples could be named of profound and accomplished grammarians, who have given the strength of their days to the elucidation of the Bible, and yet, both in heart and in conception, were utter strangers to the truth as it is in Jesus. The ignorance charged upon the woman of Samaria is not peculiar to her. It exists among the thousands of every country where Christianity is established, and where the title of Christian is prefixed to the name of every individual. There are multitudes that know not the gift of God, and that know not Him who proclaims and offers it. They know not what the gift is, and they know not how or where to apply for it. The country teems with Bibles and with churches, and yet they maintain a determined ignorance in the midst of all their opportunities-their days on earth unenlightened by the guidance of that heavenly instruction

which is to be found in the Bible-and, when they come to resign their temporal life, utter strangers to the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent, whom to know is life everlasting.

I count it, my brethren, one of the most striking exhibitions which theology can furnish, that a man may give the strength of his days to the labor of its most difficult and profound investigations, and be, after all, a stranger to what is called in the Bible the spiritual discernment of the truth as it is in Jesus-that after he has done all which earnest attention and solid understanding, and the talent of pouring upon his subject the light of a brilliant and convincing illustration, and every other faculty of his natural constitution. can accomplish, he may still be laboring under all the blindness of him into whose mind the light of the glorious gospel of Christ has never yet entered-that the terms of "God," and "judgment," and "salvation," and "grace," may be recognized by him as well-known sounds, and may even be employed by him in such a way as to make out a sound and pertinent and irresistible argument, and yet the import of these terms may not be so perceived by him as to be at all felt or appreciated in such a way as a distinct sense of their meaning would infallibly lead him to do. Oh, it is interesting to observe how, when genius has exhausted all its resources, and that mind which would have carried its possessor to the sublimest attainments of human science has lavished all its exertions on the Bible, the man may still be in a state of positive deadness as to the living meaning and the practical influence of any of its truths; or, in other words, those truths are actually not seen by him. They do not come upon him with the impression of their reality. They may form the elements of many an ingenious speculation, and enter with appropriateness into many a process of reasoning, but by him they are not so believed and not so looked to as to give its prevailing bent to the heart and the life and the affections. He may even be sensible of all this, and wish it to be remedied, and bring his every natural power to the object; and yet he may find

that all, all is unavailing. There is a barrier between him and the saving knowledge of the doctrine of Christ, over which all the energies of the best endowed intellect can not carry him. Nay, he may perceive the most illiterate of his neighbors to have got beyond him, and to look on the field of revelation with such a clear and affecting perception of all its objects as he can not attain to. Such experiences as these are valuable, my brethren. They go to confirm the doctrine of a spiritual illumination. They harmonize with that utterance of our Saviour when He says, "Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes." They put us all, as to the gospel of Christ, on the same footing of dependence they reduce us to the attitude of little children. Nor do I know a finer exhibition than when a man of gigantic faculties is brought down to this, and knocks for light at a door which he can not open-and feeling that he has done nothing till he obtain such a view of spiritual and unseen matters that believing on them from his heart the fruit may be holiness, he, after discovering the utter incompetency of all native and unaided exertion to obtain for him such a view, is at length reduced to the earnestness and to the humility of prayer.

Let me attempt, in the following discourse, to expose this in its various particulars. Some may, by the blessing of heaven, attend to us with the hearing ear; and the hearing ear may, by the same blessing, be accompanied with the understanding heart. God may achieve the greatest things by the very humblest of His instruments; and I count the greatest and most interesting of all events to be-what is unnoticed by the world, and what the pen of history seldom records but in characters of contempt-that grand transition by which a human soul passes out of darkness into the marvelous light of the gospel. Could this light be only communicated, you would no longer be at a loss to understand the gift that is held out, and the quarter where you were to apply for it. You would ask of Him who has both the will and the ability to give, and He would do to