duty is personal, present, imperative, and independent of the state and conduct of all others. I have commanded you to follow me. It is yours to obey, directly, unhesitatingly, and for yourself, without being influenced by what those around you may do or not do."

Such was the scope of the text as it was originally spoken. But apart from this special application, it contains a general truth of great and vital importance. It teaches us that our obligation t obey and serve Christ is individual, immediate, and unchanged b any obstacles that may arise from the deportment of others, from the delusion of our own minds.

Many there are who, when urged to follow Christ by embraci his salvation, and devoting their hearts and lives to his cause, al' themselves to be deterred by some inquiry foreign to their di or by some real or imagined difficulty with which they have Such may be found, in great numbers, practical concern. among those who profess to be religious, and those who have 1 submitted to the claims of the Redeemer. To each of these c! the text conveys a most appropriate admonition. For the s brevity, however, I shall leave the former wholly out of vie confine myself exclusively to the latter. It is my wish to a those unconverted persons who refuse to comply with the tures of the Gospel, until every extraneous question whic can ask is settled, and every fancied impediment which t conjecture removed out of their way.

I. The first class which I shall mention, as coming ur description consists of those who hesitate to yield them Christ, because they cannot understand all that the Bible

It admits not of question that there are in the Script "things hard to be understood"-deep and inscrutable which no human intellect can solve. This results necess the weakness of our faculties, and the infinite nature of th of which Revelation treats. It is to be expected that reason, which meets a thousand enigmas even in the life, should find itself baffled and confounded whenever to grasp the mighty secrets of emity. But "wha to thee?" These mysteries truth-to those recondite wholly dissevered from is practical, all that ro the method of his re righteousness of C him in these ci rationalITY scious

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dest minds. God has not seen fit to answer it ; at remain, in the present state of our faculties, inexplicable. That the Almighty could have di of our first parents, and the consequent corrupat aled upon their posterity, we can not doubt; and a we dare assign why he did not do it, is, that havto govern the world by moral, not physical force, in men from sin by an act of absolute power, he would oyed their free agency, and thus have subverted the tem of administration which he had established. He edeomed it best, on the whole, to suffer evil to exist, deultimately to overrule it for his own glory and the highof the universe. This conjecture, though probable, can Pa to be an adequate solution, and human sagacity after all forts, must leave the subject where it found it-among the omprehensible things of Divine Sovereignty.

But what is that to thee ?" You are a sinner, however you became so. This is the naked, actual fact with which you have to do. By nature and by practice you are the enemy of God. stranged from him in heart and in life, and exposed to the penalty of that holy law which proclaims: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." The disease is within you, preying upon your very vitals; and infinitely more important is it for you to know how it may be cured, than how it arose. And, blessed be God, there is no obscurity here. "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin." In the atoning sacrifice offered on Calvary, a remedy has been provided for transgression; and whoever accepts that sacrifice in contrition and faith, shall be purified from guilt and absolved from punishment. This remedy is proffered, without money and without price, to all who are willing to receive it. No philosophy is needed to understand it, no science to apply it. Its only mystery is this-look and live, believe and be saved. And will you neglect a provision so simple, so easy, so efficacious, because you can not ascertain exactly in what manner you came to need it? That you do need it, is a great and fearful reality. Without it you are lost forever. Oh! what infatuation, to stand still and dispute about the parentage of sin, while sin itself, actual sin, personal sin, willful sin, sin multiplied into a thousand forms and shapes of aggravation, is hurrying you down to the second

death!

A city at midnight is roused by an alarm of fire. The bells ring out their startling summons. The engines thunder along the streets. A stately mansion is burning. From roof, and gable, and casement, and balcony, the maddening flames leap forth, dyeing the heavens with blood, and shedding a lurid glare on the apturned faces of the crowds below. Soon it is whispered that in ne of the highest chambers of the building there is a man asleep,

and at the mercy of the conflagration. A thrill of horror goes through the multitude. What shall be done? The stairways and passages are all in a blazc. Every avenue of escape seems cut off. A bold fireman seizes a ladder and places it against the window of the room occupied by the unconscious victim. Up, up he mounts through blinding smoke and rushing flame, for it is life that he goes to save. He reaches the window-he dashes it in, and calls upon the sleeper to come forth and descend. But the heedless inmate, instead of complying, raises himself on his elbow, rubs his eyes, and asks: "How on earth the house came on fire!" Fool! idiot! is the answer-no matter now how the house came on fire; it is on fire; and you will be burned up if you wait to find out in what way the fire caught. Still he insists that he can not go till he has satisfied himself whether the fire was communicated by accident or by design; from a candle borne by some careless hand, or from the torch of the incendiary. And while he lingers in this bootless quest, roaming from room to room, over shaking floors and beneath tottering rafters, the roof falls in, the walls collapse, and he is buried under the blazing ruins.

O sinner! such is thy conduct, and such will be thy fate, unless thou art wise in time. Thy house, the house of thy soul, is on fire. No matter whether man or devil kindled the flame-kindled it is, and is wrapping thy whole nature in its destroying embrace. It has spread to every faculty and to every affection. Body, mind, and heart are alike pervaded by it. It smoulders in the workings of inward depravity. It blazes out in the lawlessness of open transgression. And this fire of sin, unless quenched by the blood of Christ, will soon become the fire of judgment, the fire of God's wrath, the fire of hell, that shall burn forever. As yet there is hope for thee. The waters of mercy are flowing by. The Refuge of the Gospel stands open. Oh! flee before it be too late. Escape for thy life-look not behind thee lest thou be consumed. Stop not to ask how the fire originated. It will be time. enough for such inquiries when the fire is put out, and thou hast reached the Sanctuary above, whither it can never come.

III. Another class hold back from coming to any decision on the great matter of their salvation, because there is such a diversity of religious opinions in the world.

This is an excuse often urged. It is a very common thing for unconverted persons, when exhorted to give heed to their spiritual welfare, to reply that they know not what to believe; that amid the conflict of sects and creeds, each asserting its own infallibility, and denouncing all others, it is impossible to tell which is right and which wrong; and that, therefore, they deem it their wisest course to attend to their temporal interests, and let religion alone altogether.

But you seem to overlook the fact that the adoption of such a rule would cut you off from having anything to do with the affairs of this world, no less than with those of the next. Men differ as frequently and as widely about secular matters as they do about religion. In politics, in law, in medicine, in trade, in agriculture, in science, in all departments of thought and occupa tion, they hold the most dissimilar opinions, and carry them out into lines of practice equally dissimilar. You can scarcely find two individuals who will take precisely the same view of the simplest proposition, or be fully agreed as to the best mode of doing even the most common thing. The minds of men are so differently constituted; their intellectual endowments are so unequal, their powers of perception so unlike; each is so enveloped in a haze of prepossessions and prejudices, and so inclined to look at all subjects from his own personal standpoint-that the marvel is, not that men should differ, but that they should ever agree. So that, if you are determined to have nothing to do with religion because contradictory theories are advanced respecting it, you must, to be consistent, keep yourself aloof from every pursuit and business in life.

As a matter of fact, however, you greatly overrate the real diversity of religious sentiment which exists among those whose opinions are entitled to any regard. It is a thing naturally to be looked for that unregenerate men, following blindly the impulses of their depravity, hating God and God's revealed word, should either wholly reject the great doctrines of the Gospel, or pervert them to suit their own sinful desires and passions. Their love alike of present indulgence and of future safety leads them instinctively to dissent from whatever might seem to interrupt the one, or to endanger the other. And the forms of unbelief or of wrong belief which they embrace, will be as changeful and belligerent as the corrupt propensities from which they spring. The ungodly world is thus a vast caldron where all the ingredients of wickedness are seething together, and ever and anon sending up to the surface bubbles of falsehood of every shape and color. But among those who have been enlightened and sanctified by the Spirit of Grace, there is a substantial agreement on all the fundamental truths of Christianity. They may separate in outward things, in modes of organization, and forms of worship; but in all that is intrinsically important, they are undivided. The vital teachings of the Bible with respect to the depravity of man, the atonement of Christ, the necessity of repentance and faith, the renewing influence of the Holy Spirit, the eternal happiness of the righteous, the eternal misery of the wicked, are universally held by all real Christians throughout the world. And it has ever been so. The people of God, of all names, of all countries, of all ages, bear here one harmonious testimony. I listen to the voices of patriarchs