shaken in the faith of Him. Hold by this as the anchor of your soul, that what He hath said is true; and like those who against hope believed in hope, your faith will prove itself a firmer principle by maintaining its vigor even in that season of darkness when the other powers and exercises of the mind refuse to go along with it-when cheerfulness has fled, when sight gives you not an object to rest upon, and conception labors in vain after images of joy. Why, my brethren, in pity and accommodation to the weaknesses of our feeble nature, God promises life to them not who conceive brightly, or who imagine vividly of the Savior, but to those who believe in His name. He leaves us not to wander among the uncertainties of fancy, but He gives us a familiar and a palpable name on which to rest our confidence. I may not be able to summon up an image of the Savior, but I can at all times lay hold of His name; and unto the invisible Being who bears it, I will ascribe all the power, and truth, and kindness which I find ascribed to Him in the New Testament. I will cleave to the saying, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do." On this I shall rest my salvation, for I shall cease not to pray for it in the name of Christ. On this I shall rest my hope of the promised manifestations, for in the name of Christ I will put up my prayers for them. On this I shall rest my security for keeping all His commandments, for I will go to Him, or, at least, I will make mention of His name, when I implore the will and the power of doing all things through Him strengthening me.

Thus furnished, I pass on to the other commandments; and while some, at the very outset of their Christianity, ramble in pursuit of frames, and raptures, and manifestations, let me take the humble but obvious path of duty which my Savior lays before me. Thus would I relieve myself of the pains of uncertainty; and, instead of walking on unknown ground, with no other light to direct me than the sparks of my own kindling, I go to the plain way of our Savior's commandments, and rejoice to think that, while performing the very least of them, I am taking the nearest road to the light

I

which I aspire after. Kind and merciful provision! would be overwhelmed in the darkness of the higher exercises, if I were called upon at this moment to prove a rapture which I do not feel, and to rejoice in a fellowship with the Father and the Son which I am not sure that I have ever experienced. There is a vail between me and those higher exercises, and to penetrate beyond this vail, there must come down upon me from above the light of a clearer manifestation than I have yet gotten. I do not deny the truth of these manifestations. How could I, in the face of my text, and in the face of sober and declared experience from the mouth of many thousands of Christians? No, I do not deny them; I long to realize them. But, O merciful provision to the babes in Christ Jesus! to reach this ground, which is still dark to them, there is a path set before them which wayfaring men, though fools, may walk in. Jesus Christ has poured the clearest light over the every-day path of duty, and has given the solemn authority of a requirement from Him to His lessons and His laws. The higher exercises may be to me incomprehensible; but surely there is nothing incomprehensible in the exercise of kindness among the needy, in the exercise of patience among the irksome, in the exercise of forgiveness among the injurious. I must wait till I obtain light and capacity for the one; but, in the mean time, let me firmly attach myself to the other. On the ground of obvious and plainly revealed duty, let me make a straight path for my feet; let me rejoice that I have found something which I clearly and certainly know to be the will of my Savior concerning me; and strengthened by that Spirit which, in simple dependence upon the promise, I have only to pray for, let me yield a willing performance, and keep by the commandments. The Savior is not blind to what is going on in me. He sees it; and, O encouraging promise to a dark, and forlorn, and alienated creature, he accepts it as the evidence of love. In His good time He will send help from the sanctuary; He will give light and manifestation to my soul. As yet I may enjoy it not; but I shall wait for it, and, in so doing, I am

only keeping another of the commandments. "Wait upon the Lord;" let me fear the Lord; let me obey the voice of His servant; and even though I walk in darkness and have no light, let me trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon my God. It is a good thing quietly to wait for the promised deliverance.*

I am sensible that this is reversing the process which many attempt, and which many fail in. Why, at the very commencement of their course they get out of sight from all their acquaintances; they can talk of their joys and their experiences, while, by their habitual neglect of the plainer duties, they disgrace the good cause in the eyes of those who are without, and prove to them who are within that they are walking in sparks of their own kindling. Such shall lie down in sorrow. But do you, my brethren, keep by the process of my text. Give your earnestness to the every-day duties of the gospel, and force the testimony of the world by your display of its virtues and its accomplishments. The men of the world laugh at the experiences of the advanced and cultivated Christian; but do you put them to silence by a firm and consistent exhibition of whatsoever things are pure, or lovely, or honest, or of good report. Then in time you will realize the description of the apostle, "As unknown, and yet well known." Be well known in the world for your integrity, for your honor, for your humanity, for your active and disinterested benevolence, for all that the world, dark and undiscerning as it is, knows how to applaud and how to sympathize with. But in respect to the life that is hid with Christ in God; in respect to the manifestations of my text; in respect to fellowship with the Father and Son; in respect to their taking up an abode with you by the Spirit, and those bodies of yours becoming the temples of the Holy Ghost; why, in respect of all these, you must lay your account with being utterly unknown. This they do not understand, for they do not experience it, and the Savior manifests Himself to you in such way as He does not unto the world.

* Isaiah 1. 10; Lament. iii. 26.

Oh that what I have said could be converted into a lesson of patience or of comfort with any melancholy Christian who may now hear me! To divert his melancholy, I give him something to do, and refer him for his daily task to those duties of the New Testament which are of daily and hourly recurrence. This is the way revealed in my text for conducting you to the manifestations you long after. Weeks, and months, and years may elapse before they arrive; but believe and persevere, for this is the faith and patience of the saints. There may at this moment be a dark screen between you and the cheering light of our Savior's manifestations; but surely there is no such screen over the lessons of your daily walk; the duties of mutual love and mutual forbearance; the prayer for grace and light in our Savior's name; and the faith, however faint its impressions on your comforts may be, that God is waiting to be gracious, and the time of your deliverance is coming. Hold fast by what you do see, and God in His good time. will reveal what you do not see. Hold fast by known duties, and you will come to experience what are yet unknown and unfelt privileges. God will do for you exceeding abundantly beyond what you have now the power either of thinking or of asking for. He will throw a radiance over your heavenly contemplations; and the Spirit of God will witness with your own spirit that you are indeed His children.

SERMON XIV.

[PREACHED at Kilmany, 3d April 1814. At Cupar, 19th February 1815. At Glasgow, 13th August 1815.]

ACTS XXVI. 25.

"But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness."

It might be difficult to give a definition of madness; but it is not so difficult to understand the circumstances which often dispose a neighborhood to fasten the imputation of madness on any individual. It strikes me that the leading circumstance which gives rise to such an imputation is a great devotion of mind on the part of the individual to some one theme or subject which his acquaintances around him do not understand and do not sympathize with. They can not enter into his tastes or feelings or pursuits, and therefore they call him unreasonable; and, if he give his whole mind to the subject, they call him mad. He has suffered some unaccountable topic to run away with him; and because it is a topic which has no attraction for them, they pronounce the man who is so run away with to be under the influence of derangement. We doubt not that a solitary star-gazer in some remote or Highland valley, where astronomy was never heard of, would fall under this imputation, and all his apparatus of books and telescopes would only serve to confirm it. It is true that now-a-days such a valley is scarcely to be met with; astronomers are admitted to all the credit of rationality; but this would not have happened had there been only one astronomer in the world. They have appeared in sufficient number to establish themselves, and the certainty of those practical results which all may appreciate, gives a credit to those abstract and diffi