there was in this nothing of the simple learner's earnest desire of instruction, for he manifestly put his questions in a captious self-sufficient spirit, and replied to our Lord's first answer not from a deep thirst for further teaching, but from a wish to justify himself." This temper the Lord saw in him. He who knew what was in man, and read the hearts of all who came before him, He saw the secret sore which was festering in this man's soul. He saw him a self-sufficient man, wrapped up in high notions of his own attainments, severing himself from others, killing within himself the seeds of sympathy with his fellows, and so strengthening that temper of mind which would ensure his rejecting the salvation which was now offered to him in these words of life eternal with which he like other captious sophists was idly trifling. And mark the way in which the Lord dealt with him to bring him to a better mind. He set before him an imaginary case on which he asked his opinion, in order to make him thus answer his own question, and pronounce judgment on himself. But in doing this our Lord changed remarkably the character of His answer. The lawyer had asked, "and who is my neighbour?" Whom am I to love as myself? How shall I know this man who is to be the object of my love? Our Lord sets before him the robbed and wounded Jew neglected by his own countrymen, and tended in his extremity by the merciful Samaritan: and then he

bids him say who played the neighbour to this man : and when the lawyer pronounced rightly, that he who shewed mercy was that true neighbour, the Lord, as having at his own mouth answered his question, bids him "Go and do likewise." Yet how had He answered him? The lawyer asked who was the neighbour upon whom he was to bestow his love and aid. Christ replied, not by telling him this, but by making him declare who had a neighbour's heart. And thus he went straight to the root of the man's fault. He had asked "whom can I find to love?" The Lord, instead of pointing to one or to another as fit objects for his love, said, "gain a loving heart and thou wilt find everywhere fit objects for thy love." An unloving heart will find no neighbour in a robbed and wounded brother. It will make Priest and Levite see in his wretchedness only an argument addressed to their own inner selfishness why they should pass by on the other side, and save themselves the trouble and pain of sympathy. A loving heart will so open the eye that a journeying Samaritan shall see a neighbour in every neglected sufferer, even though he be a Jew upon the Jewish highway.

He asked, where can I find those I ought to love? The answer of the Lord declared to him, get rid of thy blinding self-exaltation and thou shalt see these objects everywhere around thee. Thy not seeing them already is not because they are wanting, but because thou art blind.

Here then, brethren, a great law of the new kingdom unfolds itself before us. For, first, we may see here the work and the curse of that selfishness, which clings so closely to our fallen nature. God has furnished our hearts with instinctive sympathies for those around us. He has, by the constitution of our nature, attached pleasure to the performance of acts of kindness to others: and this He has done to help us to bear the first trouble, self-denial, and sacrifice, which is implied in imparting to others what we might consume upon ourselves. He has placed us in the midst of objects fitted to draw out these emotions. Thus He has provided for us a system of natural discipline and training in order that we by acting up to its requirements may, through the help of His grace, form a character of beneficence like His own; that we may see ourselves to be in a vast dispensation of His mercy; and all these needy ones around us as related to us-as having ties to us, as being members with us of the great family of Christ's redeemed; and thus a work will pass upon our own moral nature, and from loving our brother we shall by His good guidance be led on to that love of Himself, in which is the creature's only true happiness.

Now the work of our natural selfishness is the exact opposite of all this. It begins by leading us to find our gratification in those pleasures which relate especially to ourselves. Thus it clogs the

exercise of those benevolent instincts of the heart which are not simply either right or wrong, since the acts prompted by them are done merely as being pleasureable, not as being right, but yet which are intended to help us in the first labour of doing right. And as these natural gifts are neglected, selfishness grows greater in the contracting heart. The man more and more becomes all to himself. Others are now little to him. The sense

of relationship is dying out of him. He only owns very close relations as having any claim on him ; and these he only owns because they are a part of himself. He is fond of putting off what he can call more distant claims by saying, that charity begins at home (which with such men it very rarely does): he cannot understand why he need be troubled about the sorrows of those no way connected with him. It is no concern of his. He has enough to do take care of himself. So he loves to speak. The sight of misery is troublesome to him; he would fain avoid it. If he dimly perceives its presence he passes by on the other side, shrinking even instinctively from the possibility of being claimed as the brother of a sufferer. And soon he not only neglects but misuses others. They are his tools and instruments. By using them he is to obtain pleasure, or gain, or ease. What they are, or become, is nothing to him. He will build in, without remorse, to the fabric of his own ease, comfort, dignity, or pleasure, their happiness, nay, even their en

during souls. He will satisfy his covetousness at the cost of their peace, or his ambition at the cost of their blood, or his lust at the cost of their souls. See how in this man the question, and "who is my neighbour?" is really growing into the cry of the first murderer, "am I my brother's keeper?" For from giving up the sense of wider relationship, he soon goes on to lose all real sense of the nearest and the closest. First it is himself, and those who are well nigh part of himself, against the world; but let a question rise, or seem to rise, between himself and even those closest to him, and even they shall be sacrificed. Be they parent, wife, or child, the thoroughly selfish man is ready to use them too, merely as the instruments of gratifying an all grasping self. He will ruin a child's soul to save himself the trouble of correcting him; he will destroy his family to slake the thirst of drunkenness -to supply appetite with its garbage, or to obtain the mad excitement of gambling. He is all, and they are nothing.

What utter ruin is passing upon this man's soul! How are even the natural instincts by which the early difficulties of doing right were to be aided, dying out within him, instead of being raised, as they should be in the regenerate, into heavenly graces! How is his heart narrowing and hardening! How are the eyes of his soul darkening! He strains that deadened gaze around a world which is full of sufferers, and he sees no