where a neighbour to be helped. His deafened ear hears not the groans, and sighs, and lamentations of afflicted humanity, and he asks as coldly as if no such sounds were nigh him, "and who is my neighbour?" Above all, how surely is this man making it impossible that he should love his God. For "he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how shall he love God, whom he hath not seen?" How shall he who kills within himself the natural instinct of affection for those he sees, ever rise to the high gift of loving God whom he can know only by his faith? This conduct must be most offensive to the Spirit of God; and under a dispensation of the Spirit such as is that under which we live, it must therefore be most ruinous to man. It is an intense denial of the work of Christ's cross, whereby He made all men one in the unity of His own body. For the second Adam thus restored all the broken bonds of man's relationship. Against this great grace the selfish man is a perpetual rebel. And so his soul is becoming every day more utterly at variance with the character of God. To His works of nature, and yet more of grace, it is becoming more harshly discordant. From Himself it is daily parted by a more impassable gulf. It is becoming thoroughly unfit to dwell with Him who is perfect love. Surely the full revelation of the Almighty presence would be of itself hell to such a man. He has almost passed

into that condition of perfected selfishness, which

will secure the fearful perfectness of suffering; when the foul gratifications which stayed its appetite being all removed, the lost soul shall feel itself in the grasp of that almighty hand which it has made hateful to itself, whilst the gnawings of despair make every other being, yea, and its own self also, only the fit subjects for its active malignity and hate.

And from all this, brethren, surely some important practical lessons flow with the utmost clearness.

I. For first let us, hence, see the root of utter bitterness which is within us. Our natural selfishness, if it be not cast out by a stronger power, will work thus in us. In vain against it will be all the gloss of merely amiable feeling and the play of pleasant qualities. The deep poison root will gradually kill these shallower plants. Appetite will help on its work, passion decked, as it often seems to the young, with the brightest radiance, will strengthen its power. The ambitious desires of maturer life will nourish and increase it; it will grow and strengthen with the prudence of prime, and even ripen amidst the creeping chills of age; until it pervades the whole character. In our natural selfishness is present, even with the young, and gay, and thoughtless, amidst all their better impulses and more generous aspirations, the principle of hatred; the seed out of which may be unfolded an infinite despair. Let us, then, calmly see the evil which is within us, that we may know our true condition. Let us recognise this perversion

of our fallen nature, not only in its gross and hateful workings, but even amidst its soft smiles and less offensive excesses, in order that we may hate it as it should be hated, and strive as we ought to strive to cast it out; for cast out it may be.

We

II. This is our second lesson, without which the first would be the useless discovery of an irremediable evil. He who bore our nature without spot or stain, He can cleanse that nature in us. He can be formed in us. To Him only we must go; He who made He must re-make us; He whose office it is to "make all things new," must fashion again for His own use these injured vessels. No lesser work than that of His hand can cast out this inner enemy. Of all other helps save His we may say with the despairing Father, "I besought thy disciples to cast him out and they could not."* must fix our eyes on the true man. See Him hungering, thirsting, fainting, on the way-see Him in his agony and bloody sweat, in His cross and passion; we must gaze on His wounds, we must hear His bitter cry; we must see Him, even at this cost, redeeming men, that we may know at once the evil which is to be cast out of us, and the power and love with which He will cast it out if we believe in Him. Nothing short of this can save us. Selfishness has so many turns and windings; it so revives when it seems to be trodden down; it changes itself into so many forms; when detected in a worldly it so easily

*Luke ix. 40.

assumes a religious garb; as a deep and clinging self consciousness, it so infects our religious exercises; it so mingles with and defiles our prayers, making them little else than a miserable play upon our own feelings; it so entwines itself with what seem to be acts of the deepest humiliation, or aspirations of the most intense devotion; it so falls in with that trick of our deceitful hearts, whereby intellectual comprehension and the false lights of the fancy personate the great work of spiritual renewal ; -that nothing can set us free but our faith laying hold on the person of Christ ;-our soul flying from ourselves to Him, and crying to Him mightily for cleansing. And then He will deliver us. Drops from His cross shall cleanse us. He will put His spirit within us. His work will go on in us. He will touch our eyes, and they will be "restored and see every man plainly;" He will put His fingers into our ears, and we shall hear; He will touch our tongue, and at His Ephatha its dumbing strings shall be unloosed; He will shed his love abroad in our hearts-the sense, that is, of His love to us, and the kindling of our love to Him. And this, and this only, will kill the root of selfishness within us, and raise us to the true perfection of which He has made our nature capable; for thus is fulfilled that word of God, "love is the fulfilling of the law.”

But then, brethren, there is one more lesson here, without which all the rest would be in vain.

III. If we would have His work perfected in uswe

My brethren, this must really claim union with redeemed. We do not The faith of the soul in

must strive as well as pray. It was His own word to this lawyer, "Go and do thou likewise." In shewing mercy thine eyes shall be opened, and thou shalt see who is thy neighbour. be our lesson also. We do Christ when we act as His believe if we do not work. Christ goes before its works, as the beginning goes before the end; as the life goes before the actions in which the life spends itself.

It is a low view to say that these works are valuable only because they are signs of faith: they are signs of faith, because they are the coming out of that life of which faith is the first acting; but they are far more than signs of life; they are the life in action. And as this life is His working in us, so does He own it; whilst we labour for Him He will bless us-standing by us in our boats as we cast the net-joining Himself to us as we walk on the way-feeding us from the fire of coals which He has kindled, as we drag to shore the nets which He has filled. He works with us when we work.

Thus, though our works of mercy have no merit in them to deserve any thing of God, yet our Lord does accept and bless them when done from love to Him. Yea, through them He acts on us; and our blessings to others come back as blessings to ourselves. As we in act claim through Him to see every sufferer for whom He died as a brother, He