Third. An immediate, prompt, and hearty co-operation in the further advance and triumphs of temperance, is the unmistakable duty of all.

No

Our work is not finished. We know it. We need not be taunted of it by our enemies. But we are grateful for progress. We rejoice in what our eyes see and what our ears hear; and from this we have hope and responsibility for the future. Going before us in mercy, God bids us follow after; and the more He has done for us, the more we must do for Him. This is God's work. The man who denies it is an Atheist. It is a war between God and Satan; heaven and hell; the spirit of light and the spirit of darkness. It is a work in which there can be no neutrality. He that is not for it, is against it. It is a work in which there is a heavy individual responsibility, and every man must bear his own burden. man can say," The extirpation of intemperance belongs not to me; I make no professions of temperance; I belong to no temperance society. I have other duties to perform." Every one is a member of the great family of man, and every one is bound to help and relieve his suffering fellow man. Every parent and every child-every neighbor and every friend-every magistrate and every teacher-every voter and every legislator, has a duty here. On those especially who make and execute our laws rests, to-day, a peculiar responsibility. Whatever may have been thought in former days of its necessity or propriety, to-day, in the providence of God, it is brought to their doors. The people, the true sovereigns of the land, delegating them to act in their behalf, have risen in their majesty and strength, and demanded action, prompt and efficacious. They may be indifferent themselves-they may be cold-hearted politicians they may even be corrupted by the bribes of those who fatten on the miseries of an outraged community, and may roll it back upon the people; but the people will rise in their majesty and roll it back upon them till the waves of a tremendous indignation shall sweep them from their seats, and leave the work to be accomplished by others. God will hold them responsible; and the tears of the oppressed, the widow's cry and the orphan's wail shall go up a memorial against them. Who for paltry pelf, or the world's applause, would incur their doom? Thanks be to God that our law-makers are so readily advancing to the work, and causing the blessing of future generations to come upon them; and that none have been found in a single Legislature retracing their steps.

The Church, too, must feel her responsibility in the matter. What is she, with her ministry, but God's great reforming power in the earth? Let her hold back and sustain the distillery, and the brewery, and the dram-shop, and what will she be but the scoff of the ungodly, the very loathing of Christ! And yet, are there not pulpits in the land in which this great work of reform is never mentioned? Are there not ministers and communicants who eat calves out of the stall and drink wine in bowls, and say, "No Maine Law for us ?" O tell it not in Gath! Humbled be the church that contains in her bosom such inconsistent members. Oh when there is such advance in every department of human industrywhen science is penetrating the most distant heavens, and art is doing all human work, and the ocean bows beneath man's sway, and the lightning is made his messenger-the churches cannot and will not be backward in advancing the triumphs of their great King. These victories are his vic tories. These conquests, rolling in one after another, will speedily bring the earth to his feet.

Men of wealth too have their responsibility in this matter. These triumphs of humanity are not carried forward without pecuniary means. Men of talent and influence must be sustained while devoted to the exposure of the enormous evil and the exhibition of truth. The press, with its vast power, must be brought to bear upon the vices and follies and all the delusive arts of a wicked world. And to our men of wealth, we justly look for the ability we need. They generously build alms-houses for the needy, and hospitals for the insane. Jails of immense magnitude are erected at their expense for burglars, man-slayers, and murderers. But often, how misplaced their charities! how futile their plans to relieve and protect communities! A little thus expended, given to make and sustain humane and righteous laws, would almost save the remainder. And how blessed to the poor! What a relief to thousands of suffering in our cities in these times of pressure and want, would the closing of every grog shop be! In the habitations of our working men, now wasting their earnings upon intoxicating drink, there would be bread enough and to spare. Our ten thousand beer-houses and grog-shops now fatten on the miseries of the poor. Let the rich make the paltry sacrifice required, and aid in this glorious reform, and they will indeed become fathers to the poor and hear no more cry for bread. And as we advance to this new system of legislation, every magistrate and every citizen is bound to aid in sustaining

it. Law is of no value unless it is enforced. To suffer it to lie dead on the statute book, is to give vice its freedom, and sin and suffering a triumph. Fear of reproach and suffering may deter many from duty; but the little finger of a broken and neglected law, will be stronger than all the sufferings and expense and toil of duty done, and law maintained. Woe, woe to the man who stands afar off and sees the wicked triumph!

And we need, and feel for a certainty we shall have the aid of woman. Among the thousand blessed influences which have been exerted under the civilizing influences of Christianity to redeem woman from humiliation, disgrace, and suffering, what will be found to have a higher place than this very legislation in which we are rejoicing? Nothing. Nothing. Thousands and thousands of suffering wives and daughters will here wipe tears from their eyes, and praise God for the relief afforded. Come, then, ye daughters of America, come and cast in your lot with us, and in every sphere in which you can exert an influence, let it be for this blessed enterprise.

We conclude with one prayer: Lord! give us thankful hearts for the past; and then, for the future, we cry, Lord! give us faith.

"Sir," said a clergyman of high standing and influence in Connecticut, to us once, Do you believe we shall ever get the Maine Law in this State ?" "Yes," we replied. "Well, I do not," said he; "I have no faith at all in it." "Then, sir," we answered, "if you fail of it, it will be because of your unbelief. It is unbelief that is the curse of the Church, and that keeps the world in the chains of Satan. While you have no faith, you can neither pray nor preach effectually for earth's deliverance." Oh! it is faith that is the root of all activity. Unbelief will never put the band on the wheel that sets the whole machinery of life in motion. They believe; and therefore every husbandman in his field, every mechanic in his shop, every mariner on the ocean, every merchant in his counting-room, every professional man in his practice, press their

operations and reap their harvests. What if there are obstacles to the further prosecution of our enterprise? What if custom, and appetite, and interest, and political wire-pullers, and cold-hearted christians, and the rich in their voluptuousness, and the poor in their degradation, are against us? What if to defend themselves from us and fill us with terror, the ten thousand distillers, brewers, and venders in our land wreathe themselves together like the wriggling pyramids of snakes in the swamps of Guiana-where, we are told, thousands and thousands in self-defence are sometimes seen rolling spirally on each other in one tremulous mass of writhings, with a thick array of heads thrust out upon every side, with fiery eyes, and venomous darts, and horrible hissings; the cold, deadly saliva issuing from their fangs;"-or what if the wealth of the State is all displayed as too costly to be sacrificed to our fanaticism; and all the ruin which must come upon families unnumbered, now faring sumptuously every day, is portrayed on the wall by a master hand; there is power in God, power in truth, power in humanity to sweep them all away. If we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, we may say to all these mountains, "Be ye cast into the sea, and it shall be done;" faith, that virtue shall triumph over vice, humanity over oppression, liberty over tyranny, and God over all that blots his image from creation.

But amid the triumphs which we witness and for which we once and again lift up our hearts in gratitude to God, who now doubts our success? Who now feels otherwise in his heart, than that, sooner or later, the law of entire prohibition is to be the law of every State in the Union. Who would not start back affrighted and in horror at the thought that the Maine Law was now to be repealed, and that all these States were to roll back to their former condition of drunken misery? Men may swagger in the grog-shop, and rail and abuse in the political meeting, but there is not a man who dare go into his closet, and on his bended knee, with thought of wife, and children, and judgment to come, pray that it may be so. If then our very enemies yield to our claims, why should we falter? Why hesitate a moment to lay the axe at the root of the tree and hew it down, and cast it into the fire? Lord! we say, give us faith; faith in the justice and goodness of our cause; faith in the power and aid of thine overruling providence to carry it forward and bring it to perfection; faith that it will triumph in all the earth. If there must yet longer be delay, and drunkenness with all its concomitant evils must prevail, and procession after procession, for some mysterious end, still march on to the drunkard's grave, ours be exemption from guilt in the matter. But there cannot-there will not. Every indication of Providence tells us "the good time is coming." This tremendous power for evil, through which we have so grievously suffered, is to be overthrown; and as one State after another outlaws and puts a chain upon the dragon that it shall deceive no more, we will come forth with songs and praises to Him who is God over all, blessed forever; and when the good time has come that this traffic shall cease among men, and the last drunkard shall have been made, and the last family been scathed, and the last soul been destroyed by this foul fiend, then shall earth rise in one glad anthem of praise from every mountain and valley; and every nation, and all the islands of the sea, repeat the glad Amen, and Amen. God grant that we may do our duty, and all be saved in the great salvation.

SERMON DCXLIII.

BY REV. WILLIAM WARREN.

UPTON, MASS.

RELIGIOUS PROGRESS: THE BLADE, THE EAR, THE FULL CORN. "First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear."-MARK IV. 28.

We have here a favorite and forcible method of Gospel teaching-the use of the parable. By a well known law of vegetation, the seed cast into the ground presents to the eye, first, the blade, or spire. A new form now appears, resulting from, and yet differing from, the natural soil and seed. It has broken the ground, and shows itself to the sun and the air. But this is not the fruit, nor the ear. A new development is looked for; nor is the husbandman disappointed. In due time there is the unfolding of another form of the grain-the ear. This looks towards the harvest. It is in accordance with the great law of vegetable development. There is natural progress here. The blade has come to serve a new purpose. It stands and grows, not for itself now, but for the ear, to nourish and ripen it. But this is not the end of the sowing. The ear itself has no essential value, till it comes to be clothed with the full corn in the ear, ready for the sickle and the garner. The soil is for the seed, the seed for the blade, the blade for the ear, the ear for the corn, and all for man, and for God. The one is developed into the other. There is a natural growth and progress here, which forcibly illustrate the things of religion and another life. The Saviour presents this beautiful simile to exhibit the necessity of progress in the spirituul world. There is an analogy between what we see in the field of grain, and what takes place in the spiritual life. In both, progress and maturity are looked for. Religion has its origin, not only, but its eras, its growth and perfection. The same great law underlies this subject, that pertains to natural things. There must be progress in order to perfection. Life cannot long remain stationary, whether it be natural or spiritual. When grace ceases to grow, it begins to languish. Should we not be surprised to find that the grain did not pass beyond the blade form? That it failed to bring forth the ear and the full corn in the ear? Should we not marvel to see that the babe in the mother's arms made no progress, did not grow, that year after year passed away without any development of size, or strength, or reason? We should suspect that there was some lurking disease, or natural cause in the system. And ought we not to marvel, yea tremble, to find that our religious life is making no progress, is coming to no new developments, that there is no growth, nor fruit, nor signs of maturity?

The subject to which your prayerful attention is called to-day, is the duty of reconsecrating yourselves to Christ; of leaving the things that belong to the infancy and childhood of faith, and entering upon a vigorous christian manhood. We need as a christian people a new life, a new birth and baptism, a new and entire consecration to Christ. We need

for

not only to do our first works, and return to our first love, but to go ward to greater works and sacrifices than our first, and exercise stronger and purer affection for Christ than we ever felt. And as I proceed to enforce this subject, I would

I. Appeal to the Scriptures, to the law and the testimony. The oracles of God are not silent on this subject. I refer, first, to those passages in the Prophets and the Psalms that rebuke the backslidden, and appeal in startling tones to the disobedient and the halting. Return unto me, saith God, and I will return unto you. Wash you, make you clean. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Ezekiel and the minor prophets utter themselves in words of terror to the disobedient and the wavering. Again, all those texts that refer to the kingdom of heaven as progressive, under the parable of the mustard-seed, or the leaven, or the rising light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day, go to illustrate and confirm this duty. Those Scriptures, too, that speak of religion as a race, or a struggle or a warfare, are in point here. Those, too, that require growth in grace, and exertion in spiritual things, the addition of one excellence and attainment to another, and the abounding in spiritual traits and fruits, set forth this duty in a very clear light. And then all those Scriptures that require us to leave first principles, to cease to be babes in Christ, and go forward to perfection, set forth very plainly the great duty of Christian growth. The word of God is full of warning and startling appeals to the lukewarm and worldly professor; and full of exhortations and encouragements to progress in the spiritual life.

II. It is a most reasonable service to which I now exhort you. It is one that falls in with the nature of things; yea, with every law that regulates the natural and spiritual world. แ As ye have received Christ Jesus the

Lord, so walk ye in him." But how did the Corinthians, how did we receive Christ at first? By repentance, by consecration, by throwing ourselves upon him and trusting him in all his offices? It was by strong resolutions and vows and pledges, most sacredly made and held. To walk in him, therefore, is to continue in these and similar exercises to the end. It is to bear to the hill-top the cross we first took up. It is to carry out unto death the sacrifices we first pledged; and to let these first spiritual exercises be deepened and strengthened and developed to a full maturity. Conversion is but the first step of the Christian's progress. Religion is only the repetition of these first steps, by which we are to gain new fields and heights of glory. The faith we first felt is to be strengthened and heightened into vision. Our first repentance and humility are to be deepened, until we are lost to sin, and self, and carth. So of hope, and love, and joy; these are to become more and more serene, and pure, and celestial, as years pass on. There is no reason why these christian experiences should stop at the new birth, and not make new and higher developments to the end. Is not their fulness as desirable as their com mencement? Is not completeness of christian character as necessary, and as much enjoined in Scripture, as the possession of christian character at all? Is not heaven as really conditioned on the fulness and maturity of christian experience and character as on the existence of such experience and character in the first case? How readest thou ? Are we not as really under a spirit of infatuation, to hope for eternal life, without a